Cannabis provides relief to children with rare epilepsy

Source: Amanda Reuther

Amanda Reuther and her daughter Paeyton Reuther, who suffers from a rare form of childhood epilepsy. The Reuther family turned to a cannabis-derived oil when conventional epilepsy medications failed to control her seizures. Paeyton has not had a seizure since she started using CBD. 

The Reuther family has gone every six months since the first seizure to visit a neurologist. The doctor was forced to keep increasing Paeyton’s dose each time to keep up with her increasing tolerance for the drug. Reuther said her 23-year-old sister had a seizure and was prescribed the same medication her daughter takes; her sister takes 1,000 milligrams twice a day, while her 40-pound daughter takes 900 milligrams twice a day.

“She’s kind of getting to her max, and if she maxes out, we’re going to have to add a second medication,” Reuther said. “With every seizure, she gets closer to that maxing-out point,”

The medicine Paeyton takes currently has very few side effects, but Reuther was worried that if her daughter was forced to begin taking another, it would “destroy her body entirely.”

“That would be something she would be, you know, dependent on for maybe the rest of her life,” Reuther said.

So when Paeyton had the 11 seizures in 10 hours, her mother was scared and desperate for a solution. She didn’t want to take her daughter to the emergency room where her genetically weakened immune system makes her highly at risk for infection and where they’d prescribe her more powerful drugs, but she had to do something.

Amanda had watched a documentary about how CBD could help epileptics and had even discussed it with her doctor, so when a friend offered to drive over to her house with some, she said yes. She gave her daughter three drops of the oil along with her other medication.