The mum of a toddler suffering from 100 epileptic fits a day has begged doctors to give her poorly tot a CANNABIS-based cure.
Jenna Heary, 22, hopes the Class-B drug could help put a stop to seizures had by her two-year-old daughter Olivia Botham.
The youngster is already on six bouts of different medications and ketogenic diet – but mum-of-two Jenna claims it doesn’t work.
She now hopes that Olivia can secure a clinical trial spot so she can use CBD medical cannabis oil or Cannabidiol to help reduce and control the seizures.
Jenna, of Preston, Lancs., said: “In one child I heard of, the oil reduced her seizures by about 50 per cent
“I want to get her on a trial to make her just that little bit more comfortable and if it reduces her seizures that would be a real bonus – it’s our last resort.”
Olivia has been left blind and partially paralysed after showing the symptoms for Early Myoclonic Encephalopathy (EME), a particularly severe form of epilepsy, at just one month old.
Jenna and Olivia’s father Matthew Botham, also 22, are desperate to give the ill tot a better quality of life for however long she has left.
Jenna, who cannot work because Olivia needs round the clock care, said: “She started having these eye flickers.
“Then one night she cried so much that in the end she wasn’t even making a sound. She had gone lethargic and she wasn’t feeding so I took her to A&E.”
Doctors have told Jenna that the sets of cluster seizures throughout her early life has left the toddler not being able to walk or talk.
She added: “She can go [die] anytime, she could have sudden unexplained epileptic death where she goes so bed and just doesn’t wake up.”
Cannabidol, a drug derived from cannabis but with the psycho-active elements emitted, has helped thousands of epilepsy sufferers, research boffins say.
