![]() People have been smoking cannabis medicinally for thousands of years. The pills contained a pharmaceutical derivative of cannabis. We were confident the medicine wouldn’t kill Sam or hurt him irreversibly, but the prospect still made us nervous. Sam Vogelstein has had epilepsy since he was 4 and a half. That meant two more rounds of brain scans, blood tests, and doctors’ appointments. They would need to revisit the hospital two more times before they returned to San Francisco on January 3, 2013. Evelyn was to keep a log of his symptoms during their two-week stay. He was to take a 50-milligram pill once a day for two days, increasing the dose to maybe three pills twice a day. They’d come 5,350 miles to get these pills, medicine we hoped might finally quiet Sam’s unremitting seizures. Some gel left in his hair from the brain scan was making him grumpy.Įvelyn was terrified. Sam had been through a brain-wave scan, a blood test, and a doctor examination. ![]() They’d been at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children since midmorning. Now, 30 hours later, it was just after 7 pm. They’d flown from San Francisco to London the previous day, December 19, 2012. She and our 11-year-old son, Sam, were jet-lagged. They would know if she broke the rules.Įvelyn said she understood and slipped the brown glass bottles into her purse. The pharmacist made it clear that he was not only in touch with our doctor but with the company supplying the medication. The pharmacy knew how many pills had been dispensed, he said it would know how many had been consumed and it would expect her to return the unused pills before she left the country. The hospital pharmacist slid three bottles of pills across the counter, gave my wife a form to sign, and reminded her that this was not the corner drugstore. Our last hope: an untested, unproven treatment. After seven years we were out of options. His epilepsy caused him to have up to 100 seizures a day.
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