Illustration: Caitlin Doherty
The day before Mandy McKnight gave her then six-year-old son Liam cannabis oil for the first time, he had 70 serious tonic-clonic (formerly known as grand mal) seizures. A few times an hour, around the clock, he would lose consciousness while his whole body stiffened and convulsed for about three minutes. On top of the seizures and the exhaustion and disorientation that followed, Liam was knocked out by the side effects of the cocktail of anticonvulsant drugs he was taking several times a day. ?Most of the time he would just lie on the couch drooling, basically catatonic,? says McKnight. ?It was a nightmare.?
Liam, now eight, has Dravet syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy caused by a rare genetic mutation. He was diagnosed when he started having seizures at nine months old. Before then, he had been a healthy, happy baby. Over the next five years, Liam was placed on 10 different medications and a special diet, but nothing worked: his seizures were becoming more intense and more frequent. Prolonged and repeated seizures (ones that last longer than five minutes and don?t allow for recovery between them) can be life-threatening, and by 2013, McKnight says she and her husband needed to act. ?We felt like Liam was going to die if we didn?t do something.? They had heard success stories from other parents of kids with Dravet syndrome who were experimenting with cannabis oil?edible oil infused with strains of medical marijuana with high levels of can...