Sierra Riddle turned to medical marijuana after chemotherapy made her 3-year-old son Landon violently ill. Since starting the controversial treatment in January, she says his cancer has gone into remission.
A Colorado Springs mom is catching heat from social services for treating her son’s cancer with cannabis instead of chemotherapy.
The thing is, she says, it seems to be working.
Sierra Riddle learned a year ago that her son Landon, 3, had an aggressive form of leukemia. Doctors in their hometown of Salt Lake City began the standard treatment of radiation and chemotherapy, which took a heavy toll on his little body.
Landon became violently ill, vomiting multiple times a day, and suffered nerve damage in his legs, Riddle told CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta in July. At one point, the boy went 25 days without eating.
“Around the clock, he’s usually on liquid morphine, Ativan, Promethexane. And it just really didn’t seem to be helping,” Riddle said.
Though she didn’t know much about medical marijuana, Riddle decided to try it because “we didn’t have anything else to lose.” She and Landon moved to Colorado, where medical marijuana is legal, in order to obtain the drug.
In January Landon began taking liquid forms of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) and CBD (cannabidiol), two compounds found in cannabis. Miraculously, his cancer began to retreat.
“As soon as we started taking the oil, his platelets have been a regular healthy person’s level and they can’t understand why,” Riddle told CNN.
Landon went off chemotherapy in early July, and continues to take his four liquid capsules of the cannabis compounds per day. Last week, local news reports showed Landon as a happy, healthy-looking little boy, running and playing as any three-year-old would.
But doctors are concerned that stopping Landon’s chemo treatments may put his life in danger. After a Colorado doctor threatened to report Riddle for refusing chemotherapy for Landon, a human services agent showed up on her doorstep last week, CBS Local Denver reported.
Another sit-down with the doctor and child protective services was reportedly scheduled for Wednesday, October 2.
Riddle told CBS she has not missed any of Landon’s scheduled appointments, but refuses to put him back on chemo unless his situation turns dire again.
“I just want to say, no matter what I am not going to give him chemo, but I’m not going to risk losing him either,” she said. “I’m not going to push it that far.”
Riddle isn’t the first parent on record to use medical marijuana to combat a child’s cancer. Last year, a 7-year-old girl in Oregon was given the drug by her mother to ease leukemia symptoms.
Others, such as the Echols family of Oregon, have attempted to treat their children’s seizure disorders.
Because of laws in most states, as well as a lack of precedent for treating children with cannabis, there is almost no guidance for parents who wish to do so.
The CBD compound seems to have an ability to combat cancer in human cells and in mice according to lab experiments, researchers from California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute told CNN.
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