{"id":6262,"date":"2018-02-07T23:05:48","date_gmt":"2018-02-08T04:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lcpllutzlivetotell.org\/?p=6262"},"modified":"2019-08-08T12:43:37","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T16:43:37","slug":"west-view-woman-wants-help-families-medical-marijuana-helped-daughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/?p=6262","title":{"rendered":"West View woman wants to help other families after medical marijuana helped her daughter"},"content":{"rendered":"
West View woman wants to help other families after medical marijuana helped her daughter<\/h5>\n
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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette<\/div>\n
stwedt@post-gazette.com<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
February 7, 2018<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Days before Solevo Wellness is scheduled to open its Squirrel Hill medical marijuana dispensary, patient care consultant Annie Corbin and her colleagues are logging long hours to make sure everything is ready for its first customers.<\/p>\n

More than most, though, Ms. Corbin has an appreciation for what legal, public access to medical marijuana will mean for families dealing with serious, chronic and possibly life-threatening medical conditions.<\/p>\n

For her, the proof sits across the dinner table each evening at the family\u2019s West View home.<\/p>\n

It was nearly a decade ago that Ms. Corbin\u2019s daughter, Arianne, inexplicably started having seizures at age 8 due to a rare birth defect. The seizures typically would be of short duration, her mother recalled, but some were strong enough to knock her to the floor.<\/p>\n

Her doctors prescribed levetiracetam, a powerful drug for controlling seizures that can also come with serious side effects including mood changes and slurred speech. Arianne dealt with both.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe wouldn\u2019t talk to anyone. She was just there, someone I didn\u2019t even recognize,\u201d Ms. Corbin said during a break earlier this week. \u201cI felt like it had taken my child away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arianne began failing in school, while at home she would lash out at younger brother Darius, hitting and slapping him.<\/p>\n

That description contrasts sharply with the 17-year-old Arianne who visited her mom\u2019s work this week to preview a promotional video for Solevo in which she is featured.<\/p>\n

This Arianne is quiet, and smiles as she reports that \u201cseizures are less of a problem\u201d now, having gone nearly four years without a single one. She and her brother are now \u201clike best friends,\u201d Ms. Corbin reports.<\/p>\n

Arianne is also an honor roll student at North Hills High School, with aspirations to attend college and open her own flower shop someday.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s been doing so well it\u2019s like it never happened,\u201d her mother said. \u201cThat\u2019s amazing to me. I\u2019ve gotten my daughter back. She\u2019s happy, she jokes. And she\u2019s a fantastic artist.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dramatic change came after Ms. Corbin \u2014 faced with the unacceptable alternatives of not treating Arianne\u2019s seizure or losing her in a medicated fog \u2014 chose a third option.<\/p>\n

In late 2013, the family moved to Colorado so Arianne could begin treatment with medical marijuana, initially with a non-psychoactive cannabinoid. Within a week, her condition had noticeably improved although she still experienced a few seizures until they upped the THC \u2014 the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis \u2014 in her medicine.<\/p>\n

For the next three-and-a-half years, Arianne attended Colorado schools as she and her mother, who got a job in a local dispensary, tried to pinpoint the right level of THC for her.<\/p>\n

With both medical and recreational use of marijuana legal in Colorado, Arianne viewed the liquid she took by eyedropper twice daily as a vitamin supplement rather than a drug, her mother said. The medication cost about $40 a month.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe gets no high from it. She doesn\u2019t feel any psychoactive effect.\u201d Best of all, Ms. Corbin added, \u201cthere really haven\u2019t been any side effects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arianne said she enjoyed Colorado Springs, where she and her mother loved hiking in the mountains, but the pull of family ties also left them homesick. Asked where she\u2019d prefer to live, she says \u201cprobably somewhere in-between so I could visit them both.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critical to their return was Gov. Tom Wolf\u2019s signing the law establishing Pennsylvania\u2019s medical marijuana program in April 2016.<\/p>\n

A year later, the Corbin family was back, with Arianne using less effective legal hemp oil to treat her condition until they \u2014 and others who hold a qualifying certificate from the state \u2014 can purchase medical marijuana when Solevo Wellness starts selling products. A price list for those products has not been released.<\/p>\n

Beginning Wednesday, the dispensary is hosting an open house for the public each weekday from 2 to 4 p.m. until it formally opens on Feb. 15.
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Feb. 15 also marks the start of Ms. Corbin\u2019s duties helping other local families \u2014 a task she considers more a mission than a full-time job.
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\u201cI understand the parents\u2019 side of suffering and their fear, and I feel I\u2019m able to give them my heart and understanding,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to give other families the same chance we had.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steve Twedt:\u00a0stwedt@post-gazette.com<\/a>\u00a0or 412-263-1963.<\/em><\/p>\n

Retrieved from: http:\/\/www.post-gazette.com\/business\/healthcare-business\/2018\/02\/07\/Solevo-Wellness-medical-marijuana-tincture-dispensary-Squirrel-Hill\/stories\/201802070023<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

West View woman wants to help other families after medical marijuana helped her daughter Pittsburgh Post-Gazette stwedt@post-gazette.com February 7, 2018 Days before Solevo Wellness is scheduled to open its Squirrel Hill medical marijuana dispensary, patient care consultant Annie Corbin and her colleagues are logging long hours to make sure everything …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cannabis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}