Debarred from ‘miracle’ juice

129322_01 Tabatha and her little sister Georgia-Grace on their way to see One Direction in concert. Picture: CONTRIBUTED

By ANEEKA SIMONIS

A FORMER Pakenham mum said she was tormented by a legal system that won’t let her save her children who may not make it into their twenties.
Tabetha Fulton, 12, and her younger sister Georgia-Grace, 7, have a rare progressive inflammatory lung condition which is slowly destroying their body.
Their mother, Bobby Fulton, who uprooted her family of eight from Pakenham to live closer to a treatment facility in South Australia five years ago, said her daughters’ only life-saving treatment remained out of reach.
“Cannabis in its raw form is amazing for inflammatory diseases … when it comes straight from the plant, it contains six potent anti-inflammatory acids that could help my baby girls survive,” Mrs Fulton told.
“If a carrot could help them, I would let them have it. If broccoli would help, I would juice it up. They are good little girls … they don’t want to smoke pot, they just want a vegetable- that’s all they need.”
Both girls have a critical, undiagnosed condition where their lungs don’t supply enough oxygen to keep them healthy.
Instead of normal healthy lungs, the girls’ lungs fail to clear excessive, built up fluids known as surfactant which puts them at real and dangerous risk of drowning.
As well as being on full-time oxygen support, the girls’ only treatment takes form in a range of high-dose toxic corticosteroids which Mrs Fulton believes has caused more harm than good.
“Tabetha used to cough so continuously that she would cough up blood … her nails and hair would fall out, she wasn’t growing … she didn’t put on weight,” the distressed mum told of Tabetha’s earlier years.
While Mrs Fulton is in full support of Australia’s legalisation of medical marijuana, it wasn’t she who began the campaign.
“The fight for medical cannabis in its raw form was initiated by Tabitha. She saw oil that was helping children with epilepsy on the TV and said to me … Mum, do you think it could help me?” Mrs Fulton said as she explained Tabitha’s quest to learn more about the medicinal benefits of raw cannabis juice.
Tabetha, who has been through countless experimental drugs in a journey with no diagnosis, said she at least wanted the opportunity to try the natural anti-inflammatory.
In a video campaign for the legalisation of medical cannabis, Tabetha said steroids have caused secondary pulmonary hypertension, insomnia, osteoporosis, depression and cataracts among a range of other side effects.
“My 12-year-old said ‘for everything they have put me through, why can’t I just try a juice?’” Mrs Fulton said.
“We just want to grow a plant and get her off these drugs which are killing her faster than the condition itself. If it doesn’t work, I would burn (the plant) … this could be life-saving for my daughters. They deserve the right to live just like everyone else.”
Mrs Fulton and her husband Marcus head the Australian arm of the Children’s Interstitial Lung Disease (ChILD) Foundation and are personally working towards building greater awareness of the benefits of raw cannabis for inflammation.
Cannabis contains a range of cannabinoids, namely cannabidoil (CBD), which in its raw form, is a medically proven non-psychoactive that can help treat autoimmune disease, inflammation and pain.
“It could extend their life and it would certainly make them much more comfortable,” said Mrs Fulton, who has been told the girls’ will be fully wheelchair bound within a couple of years without a more effective treatment for their worsening condition.