Hi, my name is Bernice and I’m actually sharing my son’s journey with medical marijuana. After 2 years of being in and out the hospital, with so much pain and rapid weight loss, my son was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease on June 13 2014, right before his 16th birthday.

During the first 5 months he had tried maybe 4-5 different medications which all didn’t work and caused lots of negative side effects. In November 2014, my son was also diagnosed with a liver disease called PSC. Yeah I know… when it rains it pours — that is how I felt now that we were faced with two conditions to deal with, which meant more medications. By January 2016 nothing was working. He was getting sicker and sicker, his liver enzymes were triple what they were suppose to be. They have him on low-dose chemotherapy medications which could cause him to be sterilized after taking them for a long period of time but it wasn’t working so he was put on a high dosage of steroids… Which broke my heart to see how it made my son gain so much weight, hair and acne.

He was getting depressed.. so me and his dad started doing research. I told the doctor I was taking him off those steroids but he informed me it was dangerous to just stop so I had to see my son suffer. He gained a lot of weight and was at risk for taking the 6-MP, couldn’t be around anyone sick etc..  In February, March and April things got worse. He was now using the bathroom 5-6 times a day, incontinent at times at school where I would have to pick him up. The month of April he lost 20 pounds, he had gotten so sick and dehydrated he was hospitalized and the doctors told me they didn’t know what to do because he had both of these conditions. The only solution they had was to inject my son with a medication that would stay in his system for 2 months, but there was a side effect that was common for young black males that he could get lymphoma cancer and die.  I said I need to think about that .. I told them absolutely not!