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Moriah Barnhart’s two-year-old daughter, Dahlia, was diagnosed with a hostile type of brain cancer earlier this year. Since the identification of the cancer, Dahlia has undergone emergency surgeries in order to remove the tumor and reduce pressure on her brain. Her recovery process has been initiated which will involve multiple rounds of chemotherapy. She won’t be eligible for radiation therapy until she is three years of age.
“A good day for us is a horrifying day for most people,” Dahlia’s mother explained. “Her pain, and her nausea and hearing her cry…there are just no words to describe.”
Feeling as if she had exhausted all possibilities and desperate to bring reprieve to her ailing daughter, Moriah began researching what unfortunately seems to be an unconventional form of treatment to the field of medicine -- marijuana.
“It’s a plant that cures,” Moriah avowed. “I want doctors to be able to take that plant and utilize it to benefit my daughter.”
Moriah is the first to admit that approximately four months ago she would have shunned at the idea of using a federally illegal substance to treat her daughter, but it seems that desperate times lead individuals to try desperate measures.
I think that most of us “in the know” are fully aware that using marijuana as a medicinal treatment should be a first line of action for clinicians, not seen as an at-the-end-of-their-tether type of usage for parents with diseased children or individuals suffering with ailments when myriad clinical studies and anecdotal evidence has proven it to be effective for numerous conditions and diseases. But I digress.
“I want my daughter to wake up and remember what it’s like to want to be here,” Moriah declared. “She’s 2 years old. She should wake up every day excited that she’s alive.”
Editor's note: This article originally published on the 420 Times on September 15, 2013. More information on the petition can be found there.