Chambersburg teen helped by medical marijuana
(Chambersburg) — For the past 18 years Karen Diller, Chambersburg, has watched her daughter, Karly, suffer through multiple seizures a day due to a rare genetic disorder.
Photo by Submitted to Public Opinion Online
Karly Diller and her brother, Kyle, share a moment before attending Karly’s prom last year at Franklin County Learning Center. Karly, 18, has suffered from birth a genetic disorder which causes seizures that make her unable to experience things a normal teenager would. Her mother, Karen Diller, wonders the benefits Karly has seen since entering a cannabis oil clinical trial will continue after the trial’s over in a state now considering legalization of medicinal cannabis.
In 2004, Karly was diagonosed with CDKL5. According to the International Foundation for CDKL5, the disorder makes it “difficult to control seizures, and severe neuro-developmental impairment.”
Diller said the seizures started when Karly was two weeks old and conventional seizure medication has not helped. Sometimes they made her seizures worse.
But three months ago, Karly entered a clinical trial where twice a day she drinks a beverage containing cannabis oil. Diller said she is not consuming any part of the marijuana plant that would make her “high” or hallucinate.
“We have kept seizure diaries for her months before we started using (the oil) and after (for the past 12 weeks),” she said. “Karly has several types of seizures a day and one type of seizure has been reduced 61 percent and the other 45 percent,” she said.
However, her relief might be temporary. Diller has no way of knowing if Karly will have access to the cannabis oil once the clinical trial is over. That’s why Diller hopes state lawmakers will make medical marijuana legal.
“I pray Pennsylvania will help get it legal and the Federal Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration approve it as a drug that can be used and paid for by insurances,” she said. “I feel they are not moving fast enough.”
Sens. Daylin Leach (D-Montgomery) and Mike Folmer (R-Lebanon) have teamed up in order to get a medical marijuana bill passed through the Senate. In a statement released through his office, Leach said the research supports the use of medical marijuana.
“Physicians, researchers, and patients all over the world know that cannabis can be used to treat certain medical conditions and symptoms,” he said. “Cannabis’ medical benefits are so well known that 23 states have already created medical cannabis protocols. I started advocating for medical cannabis because Pennsylvanians need it. To deny people the medicine they need is just cruel.”
Senate Bill 3 would make the use of medical marijuana legal in the state of Pennsylvania. A similar bill passed through the Senate last year but failed to garner enough votes in the House of Representatives.
This year’s bill includes some revisions from last year’s, including a comprehensive registry which would allow officials to know who has access to medical marijuana.
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