Dear Editor: I am a 36-year-old man with an inoperable brain tumor, which causes multiple grand mal seizures a day. I have been a patient at Children’s Hospital and the Kirklin Clinic since the age of 8. I have had four unsuccessful brain surgeries.
I have been on every seizure medication known to mankind, as well as some that never received the Federal Drug Administration’s approval. A few years ago, I saw a program on marijuana being used as a seizure deterrent. I decided to try marijuana as a medicine, and I have had better results using marijuana in its natural form than from any other treatment in my life. My seizures have decreased from six to eight per day to one every six to eight weeks. My neurologists have documented this in my medical records.
I have also been arrested twice for possession of marijuana. It caused me great hardship both on a psychological level and a monetary level. I wondered then, as I do now, why people in 12 U.S. states are treated like patients and allowed access to medical marijuana, but here in Alabama I am treated like a criminal for trying to treat my illness?
There is a bill before the House Judiciary Committee to protect physicians who recommend marijuana to their patients for certain illnesses like cancer, multiple sclerosis, HIV/AIDS and seizures, and the patients, like me, who use it as medicine from being prosecuted under state law. Please call your elected officials and tell them to vote yes on HB206 the Compassionate Care Act.
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I worked with one of the patients who is working with us at Compassionate Care to write this letter last week. Congratulations Michael!!! You did it!!
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