Thornhill girl’s seizures end with cannabidiol-rich medical marijuana oil

By Jennifer Cheng

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Gwen Repetski was diagnosed with epilepsy when she had her first seizure in 2012. Her father,
Alexander Repetski feeds Gwen cannabidiol CBD three times a day, and she hasn’t had a seizure since
the treatment began.

Image: Alexander Repetski

Gwenevere “Gwen” Repetski turned three about a week before Father’s Day and her parents are overjoyed to see their daughter crawling and laughing.
She was diagnosed with epilepsy when she had her first seizure in 2012. Her father, Alexander Repetski, said they tried pretty much everything to help her, and nothing was working: about eight drugs over two years. The first one, Sabril, was only reducing her observable seizures, but an EEG showed massive epileptic activity in her brain. The second was a steroid called ACTH, which made her put on half her body weight in three weeks.

“Gwen wasn’t very happy; she wasn’t even ticklish. Her brain was in a constant state of chaos. She had anywhere from two to 100 seizures a day,” said Repetski, adding that her cognitive development had halted at that point.
He also recalls that she could not walk, only sit up, and even then she would fall down most of the time in their Thornhill home. “Her brain wasn’t connecting the dots,” said Repetski, who reduced his work hours during this time to focus on researching epilepsy, a debilitating neurological disorder which affects one in 100 Canadians.

When he came across cannabidiol (CBD), found in the marijuana  plant, as a therapy for epilepsy, he started inundating physicians with information until one agreed to write a prescription allowing his daughter to take marijuana. “The doctor felt there was no chance it could hurt her.”
However, criminal lawyer Daniel Brown said Repetski is technically in violation of the federal Marijuana for Medical Purposes Regulations, which went into effect in 2014.

“I think the law is unconstitutional, but it says anyone with a marijuana prescription must keep it in dried form,” he said.
Gwen could not smoke the pot as an infant, so Repetski has been making marijuana oil in his kitchen, then sending it off to a lab for testing. He feeds Gwen CBD three times a day, and she hasn’t had a seizure since the treatment began.

One of her physiotherapists, Bernadette Connor, said she has seen a dramatic improvement in Gwen’s gross motor development and general interest and interaction within her environment in the last six months since Gwen started using CBD.
“She is progressing well towards independent walking without the interruption of seizures,” Connor wrote in an email to Post City.

“It was important to tell this story because there are many parents out there who are looking at this as a possible therapy for their kids,” said Repetski, who now works for MedReleaf, the only licensed Canadian producer of Gwen’s marijuana, a CBD-rich cannabis strain called Avidekel.
“When you’re dealing with a two-year-old kid, asking them to wait has a catastrophic effect on development,” Repetski said. “Gwenevere is far more alert and connected to the world around her and us now.”