| Lorelei Ulrich from mmj4l.com |
Could a six-year-old sick child help turn medical marijuana laws in Pennsylvania? If lawmakers there have a heart, the answer will hopefully be yes.
Lorelei Ulrich has been steadily declining in health for four years, suffering from epilepsy that has her lifeless, not wanting to eat or play and basically wasting away. Her parents say that all of the treatments they have tried haven’t helped – but medical cannabis treatments high in CBD have worked for kids in other states and now the Ulriches are fighting to make it legal in their state.
The Ulrich family says that they didn’t initially think that medical cannabis was something they could tolerate. Both said they disregarded the research they saw online until an August documentary on CNN featuring Charlotte Figi and her remarkable success in fighting off seizures with CBD oil in Colorado. The special, hosted by CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta, opened their eyes.
On the screen, the Ulrich family saw in Figi a little girl that mirrored their own that had been saved from her hundreds of seizures and returning to a reasonably normal life.
Ulrich suffers from an undiagnosed condition, but her parents say that she is currently having 400 seizures a day. That’s down, too, from as many as 1,400 in a day.
Lorelei is aware of what is going on now, but doesn’t understand the politics of why one child can have medicine and another can’t simply because of where each one lives.
“She actually broke my heart the other night. I have been very forthright with her about her condition — you know, she doesn’t really understand her condition because she’s had it since before she was 2 years old, so it’s normal for her,” Lorelei’s mother Dana tells the Lancaster (Penn.) Intelligencer-Journal. “But she asked me, ‘Why won’t those people let me have my cannabis medicine? If they know it will help me get better, why can’t I have it?’ She doesn’t understand why she can’t have it, and I can’t really give her a good explanation.”
Sadly. Neither can we, and that’s a shame because that poor little girl deserves the chance to feel better and her parents shouldn’t have to uproot their lives and uproot their existing support systems to access it.
Ulrich says that her doctors are behind it, they just can’t recommend it in Pennsylvania legally. Two medical marijuana laws are currently in the state legislature waiting to be moved forward this session, however the acting governor, Tom Corbett has said he would veto either of the bills if they came before him. Corbett is up for reelection this November, however.
A facebook page and website have been set up for Lorelei Ulrich and her supporters.