Skye Fleming could suffer as many as 130 seizures a day.
Doctors say it’s a miracle that a 15-year-old girl’s seizures have disappeared after a cannabis-based drug trial.
Skye Fleming suffers from debilitating epilepsy attacks, which could happen as many as 130 times each day. After spending much of her life in hospital, Skye said the trial success had given her hope for a normal life. “I feel heaps better because I can stay at friend's places and that, because I couldn't do that (previously),” she said. Fortunately Skye was accepted into the state government's cannabis-based drug Epidiolex trial. “She would get bullied and teased and things thrown at her because epilepsy awareness isn't out there,” Skye’s mother Nicole added. “I was willing to give anything a go because the next step if this didn't work was more brain surgery. “There was a 90 per cent chance she would have a stroke and be paralysed down one side of her body." Child neurologist Dr John Lawson, the trial's lead investigator, said he was skeptical about the effectiveness of the treatment at first. "These sorts of things are like a fad,” he said. “(Skye) was stuck in bed, she couldn't go to school and then, within a couple of weeks of starting Epidiolex, her seizures really stopped." So far, 40 children and teenagers have been accepted to the Epidiolex trial but medicinal cannabis supporters say there are thousands of other patients who are forced to break the law to access it. Medical research minister Pru Goward has urged those patients to wait until wider approval is sought. “When you see miracles, because that's what this is, miracles like Skye … it was worth it,” she said. “It's scientifically based - some drugs take 10, 15, 20 years to get to the market and this is no exception." - yahoo.com |
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