The Leaf THE LEAF November-December 2017 | Page 21

Desperate Mum breaks law with homemade cannabis oil for daughter
By Dan Knowles The Sunday Mail 15/10.2017
SUNSHINE Coast mum Katrina Spraggon is
so desperate to get her daughter Kaitlyn the
cannabis oil that stops the nine-year-old’s
crippling seizures that she has started making
the illegal drug herself. The Ningi single mum said her daughter
relied on the THC in raw cannabis oil to ease
chronic pain from spinal and hip problems.
Ms Spraggon said she had tried everything to
get Queensland Health to prescribe the drug
but instead she had been told Lady Cilento
Hospital would no longer treat her daughter if
she continued using it and police searched her
house the day Kaitlyn returned from
treatment.
Katrina Spraggon says she has tried
everything to get Queensland Health to
prescribe the drug for her daughter Kaitlyn. She said that Kaitlyn had been prescribed a
cocktail of strong opioids and other
prescription drugs to deal with her 19 medical
conditions but they left her heavily sedated.
Since using cannabis her daughter had been
alert and had been interacting with siblings
and ready to return to school, Ms Spraggon
said.
Without it, the pain triggered severe seizures.
She told Queensland Health doctors and the
police and put details on Facebook and said it
was the only way to stop her daughter’s
seizures.
She said she desperately wanted a cannabis oil
with THC prescription for her daughter so she
could stop making the drug but had been
stonewalled.
“The cannabis oil I’m using, it’s illegal,” Ms
Spraggon told The Sunday Mail.
“I’ve been open and honest since three years
that I’ve put my daughter on it. I haven’t
hidden a thing.”
Picture: Jamie Hanson
She said Queensland Health also refused to
renew her daughter’s supply of bottled
oxygen — which runs out this month and
she’ll die without — in the latest episode of
her three-year fight with the government.
A last-minute meeting with Health Minister
Cameron Dick on Friday afternoon, after One
Nation MP Steve Dickson raised her case in
Parliament secured Kaitlyn the bottled
oxygen but her mother said she could not take
her daughter off the illegal drug for fear she
would have more seizures, which require CPR
and oxygen to keep her alive.
She said she had repeatedly tried to have a
meeting with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk,
who had posed with her daughter at Christmas
parties but not scheduled a meeting.
Katrina Mosely…
I will not be silenced
I am my daughters
voice
Kaitlyn