Mom Gives Little Boy Cannabis To Help Cure His Cancer

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The Daily Mail recently shared an article which was an extract from “The Boy In 7 Billion”, by Callie Blackwell with Karen Hockney.

The story is about a Mom who had given her son Cannabis to relieve his pain and cure him from Cancer.

The Mom shared how his pain was getting worse. She said that the tips of her son Deryn’s fingers were hard and black from a superbug infection. His nails were peeling away and any remaining live flesh was covered in weeping sores.

She said that every day, he begged her: ‘Please tell them to cut my hand off, Mum. I can’t take this anymore.’

The Mother said that Deryn was nauseous and, worse, had become addicted to his anti-sickness drugs.

Deryn was allowed 1 dose every seven to eight hours but within an hour of being given some, he would press the buzzer to call the nurses back in.

‘When can I have my cyclizine?’ he would ask. ‘It’s the only thing that helps with the pain. It makes me feel safe. It doesn’t hurt for a little while, just long enough to forget about it. Then it all comes back again.’

Deryn would get angry and aggressive if he was made to wait – like someone hooked on heroin.

In 2010, when he was just ten years old, Deryn had been diagnosed with leukaemia.

Eighteen months later, he was told that he had a secondary cancer, the extremely rare Langerhans cell sarcoma. Only half of the cases who had it had been recorded and only 5 people in the world currently have it. No one had ever been found to have the two cancers combined, making Deryn unique – one in seven billion people.

After nearly four years of hospital treatment, by 2013 it seemed that the only thing left for him were opiate drugs to help ease the pain as he reached the end of his life.

His Mom was desperate to find something to alleviate his suffering.

“I spent hour after hour researching on the internet, and that’s where I came across reports of a substance called Bedrocan, a cannabis-based painkiller that wasn’t available in the UK. Surely Bedrocan had to be a better option than mind-numbing morphine?”

But the doctor told her that while it was effective, it had not been tested on children and she couldn’t prescribe it.

The Parents took a decision that will horrify many parents reading this, like it did horrify them initially …

“After all, I’d never seen anything positive come of smoking cannabis, and in my days working in nightclubs, illegal drugs had been my enemy. But if it could help my darling boy escape his daily torment, I was willing to try it.” 

They had to find some cannabis and then work out how to make the liquid that could ease Deryn’s pain.The Mom said” Simon, my husband, arranged to meet someone at a nearby service station to collect some. The whole experience was frightening.

Cannabis was a class B drug, which carried a sentence of up to five years’ imprisonment for possession, and up to 14 years for supplying to another person.

We had seen news reports on TV about parents who had had their children taken away from them after trying alternatives such as cannabis. I hadn’t forgotten one doctor’s words to me about my child being made a ward of court if we went against traditional treatment methods.

If either of us were to get into trouble over this, Simon wanted it to be him. And he took responsibility for the operation. He wasn’t going to allow anyone to take me away from the children just for alleviating Deryn’s suffering.” 

Back at the hospital, Deryn’s latest bone marrow transplant had failed and people were giving up on him. Deryn’s death seemed to have been a done deal and if there was no improvement in two weeks, he would be placed in palliative care.

His Mom said: “If ever I needed a sign to get a grip on myself, this was it. I had to remain positive, no matter what the doctors were telling me.

After further research, I discovered we needed to buy a rice cooker and vegetable glycerine to make the ‘tincture’ suitable for the vaporiser pen. The house stank to the heavens as Simon experimented with the infusion.

Deryn, of course, was excited to be trying it with the blessing of his mum and dad, but I felt anxious at the prospect of my son’s underage and illegal drug use, especially as we were in hospital.

After drawing the curtains so that no one could see through the window, Simon handed the filled pen over to Deryn. We felt like naughty schoolkids who were having a sneaky cigarette around the back of the bike sheds.

Deryn sucked on the pen, breathed in and blew out a massive cloud of vapour – and we frantically waved our hands around trying to disperse it, although there wasn’t the smell of cannabis. It smelt more like popcorn. After ten minutes, Deryn said that the pain had decreased a little and he felt more relaxed – the words we had been longing to hear”.

Alas, his condition continued to deteriorate and Deryn even began to plan his own funeral. He was actually looking forward to dying and was begging for the end after staying strong for so long.

He said‘I don’t want any more morphine, Mum. It makes me feel like I’m not here.’

The Mother then wondered what would happen if she gave Deryn a small amount of golden cannabis tincture directly in his mouth? Her thinking was that the vaporiser had brought him some relief but could a higher dose have better results?

“I took a small, empty syringe from the medicine cupboard in the hospice and quickly checked that there was no one outside. It was New Year’s Eve so staff levels were minimal. I drew up 5ml of the honey-like substance, which had a sweet, floral flavour.

Still sobbing uncontrollably, Deryn opened his mouth and I popped the syringe underneath his tongue. Deryn held it for a minute before swallowing. Half an hour passed. He was no longer having a panic attack. He looked peaceful. I asked him how he was feeling.

‘I feel relaxed,’ he told me. ‘I’m aware of everything. I just feel at peace, Mum. It’s beautiful.’

Moments later, the nurse came back in with his dose of cyclizine, the powerful anti-sickness drug to which Deryn had grown addicted.

I panicked. There was no way he would turn that drug away and I was worried about the effect the cannabis tincture could have on it. Then I heard Deryn tell the nurse he didn’t want it. She was flabbergasted. Everyone knew how much he relied on it to help him.”

Deryn said ‘I don’t feel like I need it any more, thanks,’ before rolling over and going to sleep.

The Mother wanted to just make him as comfortable as possible.

“Over the coming days, my priority was allowing him to die with his faculties intact, so whenever Deryn felt a twinge somewhere, I would put another 5ml of the tincture underneath his tongue and, within a few minutes, he felt good again.

Deryn’s mouth, fingers, stomach, gums, tongue, hips, knees, legs and back had been constantly painful for as long as I could remember, so this was nothing short of fantastic.

One evening, I heard Deryn yell: ‘Mum – look!’ The bandage on his middle finger had worked its way loose and completely come off, showing his third finger – which had been blackened and dead – had now healed. How on earth had a child with no immune system and no way of fighting infection managed to heal himself after being off medication for more than three weeks?

I called Deryn’s team to tell them what had happened. Not one of them could give me any answers.

We knew his bone marrow wasn’t functioning and it was not scientifically possible for his wounds to heal. Deryn had spent months in isolation because a common cold could be fatal – yet, somehow, he had overcome three catastrophic infections.

Hundreds of people had been praying for Deryn, blessing him in their own ways. Was this a miracle?

Later that evening, the hospice doctor arrived. ‘We’re no longer sure Deryn is dying,’ she admitted.

The doctors were not sure whether or not the hospice was now the best place for us.

When we’d arrived four weeks earlier, he’d been given three days to live. Now here he was a month later, in far better health than when he’d left his hospital room. They had no idea how this was possible.

Then it dawned on me. Only one thing had changed since Deryn started to recover: the cannabis tincture. I couldn’t tell the doctors what we’d done.

I was sure the authorities wouldn’t see it the same way as we did but if there was even a minuscule chance that the cannabis tincture was responsible for my son still being alive, I wasn’t willing to risk stopping it.”

Since then, Deryn has gone from strength to strength and his unique story has led to his Mother being contacted every week by parents who are desperate for a miracle.

She said: “I have trusted many of them with the truth and pointed people towards the same path we took. Deryn went back to school in Norfolk where he thrived among his friends and peer group and, following just nine months of schooling in the space of four years, he left in June 2016 with seven GCSEs. Now 17, his weight is no longer a problem and he has decided to pursue a career as a vegan chef. That irony is not lost on us, but maybe years of eating bland hospital food gave him a passion for more flavoursome and exotic dishes. He’s good at creating them too.As each day passes, the prospect of cancer returning decreases. I’ll probably never be totally free of that fear, and if he so much as coughs my hair stands up on end. I am reminded of my miracle boy every time I look at Deryn and I know deep in my heart that whatever the future may throw at us, we can cope. We always do.”

This is truly a miracle.