Letters to the Editor for August 4

Here are today’s Letters to the Editors…

Submitted by Tom Nadzam of Levittown:

I have lived in Bucks County nearly all my life. I grew up here, raised a family here and have always enjoyed the life I have here.

Almost seven years ago my youngest daughter had her first child, my first grand baby. Her name is Lorelei and she quickly became my whole world. Lorelei now has a younger sister and brother and adore them all.

Lorelei started having seizures five years ago at twenty two months of age. Since then epilepsy has consumed her life. Doctors, hospitals, medications and surgery are the norm for her. Lorelei has been on over a dozen medications, alone and in combinations. Despite all the doctors have tried, she still has roughly six hundred seizures a day…every day.

My daughter, Dana, had researched tirelessly to find other options. The one thing that she kept coming back to was medical cannabis (marijuana). This was March 2013 and there was nothing really being said in the news about it yet Dana was finding a few anecdotal stories here and there from around the country.

It wasn’t until August 11, 2013 that she knew there was something to this controversial treatment. A CNN documentary call “Weed”, hosted by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, told the story of a five year old girl named Charlotte who lived in Colorado that was being treated for her seizures with cannabis. She was being given a strain that was extremely low in THC (the psychotropic part) but very high in CBD (a non psychotropic part) so there is no “high” associated. It is also administered in oil form so she was able to take it orally rather than smoking it. Little Charlotte was having three hundred severe seizures a week and is now having only one to three in an entire month. That’s a 99% reduction.

After hearing Charlotte’s story my daughter started contacting her legislators to see what could be done about getting this medicine for Lorelei. She hit a bunch of dead ends. Everyone told her that cannabis is illegal in Pa so she was out of luck.

Dana teamed up with other mothers across the state who also have children with medication resistant epilepsy. In November of 2013, Dana and a fellow mom approached Pa Republican Senator Mike Folmer asking him to write a new piece of legislation to legalize medical cannabis in the Commonwealth. Folmer was a bit hesitant at first but after much research he was on board to help. Together, along with many experts from doctors and scientists to those who have helped with legislation in other states, they crafted SB1182. It is a wonderful piece of legislation. It’s strict and regulated but allows access to those in need with a doctor’s recommendation.

These moms could have fought for allowing access to the previously mentioned strain and it would only help their children. Instead, they have made it their mission to ensure that medical cannabis can be safely accessed by people with many different medical conditions. This would include those suffering with cancer, our brave veterans with post traumatic stress disorder, people suffering from MS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, epilepsy and more with a recommendation from their healthcare physician. SB1182 was introduced in December of 2013 and passed through the Law and Justice committee in June. Our family along with patients and advocates from all over the state were hoping to see this bill passed out of the Senate and House before summer recess but that hope has been snuffed out.

The legislature will reconvene on September 15th but until then my granddaughter, Lorelei, will have suffered approximately forty-six thousand additional seizures. The sick people of Pa don’t get to take a break from their illnesses.

My heart aches every day for Lorelei. I see what these seizures do to her. I see how it affects our whole family. I’m Poppy, I’m supposed to be able to fix everything! I can’t fix this and if doctors can prescribe dangerous and highly addictive drugs like oxycontin, vicoden, percocet an morphine, why can’t legitimately ill people use cannabis under the supervision of their doctor? The fact that we allow our people to suffer at this day in age is deplorable!

I have been and will continue to pray that the leaders of our state will listen to the 85% of it’s citizens that want medical cannabis legalized. Please don’t let my Lorelei suffer any longer.

Please contact your legislators and tell them that you want them to vote yes on SB1182 and you want them to move quickly.

Submit Your Letter to the Editor

Do you have something you want to say about a town issue? Want to praise your community members for something they did? You can do that by writing a Letter to the Editor.

LevittownNow.com accepts Letters to the Editor on issues that are important to local residents.

Our editorial staff asks that your Letter to the Editor is free of spelling and grammatical errors, clear, and void of libelous statements. We also request that letters are kept under 500 words.

Here are some keys:

• Please include your first and last name, town and email address (so we can contact you back or verify your identity.) We will only publish your name and town.
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To submit your Letter to the Editor, submit it to tom@levittownnow.com with the subject “Letter to the Editor.”