Six-year-old Mary Louise Swing likes to listen to classical music, play with her twin brother, Winfield, and swing at a playground around her West Ashley home.
But there’s a limit on what she can do with cerebral palsy and epilepsy. She can’t speak, and her mobility is limited, said her mother, Jill Swing, the daughter of Don and Mary Snyder of Aiken.
If Mary Louise is not on medication, she can have around 150 seizures per hour. Even with medication, Swing’s daughter can have as many as 100 seizures in an hour. They come quick and sometimes involve falling; more often, Mary Louise blinks rapidly or her head drops back, Swing said.
After multiple medications, diets, trips to see doctors at Johns Hopkins University and elsewhere, the Swings saw a CNN report that seemed to offer hope: medicinal marijuana. The report featured “Charlotte’s Web,” a type of cannabis that has many with epileptic seizures flocking to Colorado, which has legalized medical and recreational marijuana.
