Richard Hyatt: Family has a reason to be thankful

Ava Wilson is 7 years old and she can't come home.

She won't be at her house for Thanksgiving. But 1,300 miles from home, she will count her blessings, grateful that she has her personality back and that she can smile, giggle, cry and hug.

Ava was a student at North Columbus Elementary School when the seizures began. At their worst, she suffered 300 to 500 a day and this past summer her family thought they were losing her.

Their only hope was a controversial move to Colorado where Ava is one of 15 children from Georgia receiving cannabis oil, a derivative of marijuana that is illegal in Georgia.

The results give her reasons to be thankful. She is seizure free and for the first time in months she is reunited with her dad.

"This has been a life saver and a life changer," said Ava's grandmother, Gail LaFramboise.

Gail is a retired principal and special education teacher, so she thought she had seen it all until the effects of Lennox-Gastaut syndrome took its toll on Ava.

Two years ago this month the seizures began and with every pharmaceutical drug she was prescribed the attacks increased.

"She became unresponsive," Gail said. "She was breathing and her eyes were open but she had no vocalizations, no crying, no laughing, no interaction of any kind, just a lifeless body that was breathing and that's all."

Gail couldn't watch her granddaughter die so she and her daughter-in-law, Jill, moved Ava to Colorado so she could be treated with medical marijuana.

Life there has been lonely but rewarding, only now they can't come home.

It is illegal for families like Ava's to bring cannabis oil into Georgia and their only hope is that legislators will change those laws when the General Assembly convenes in January.

Ava doesn't understand politics. She just misses her dad. They arrived in Colorado Monday night and she hasn't let him out of her sight since he got off the plane.

Nor does she grasp the endless debates about marijuana.

All she knows is that the seizures have subsided.

"We had lost the little girl we knew and now we have her back," Gail said.

The oil looks like cough syrup. She takes it by mouth three times a day. It has no street value and doesn't get you high.

This is the elixir that HB1 hopes to legalize in Georgia.

Ava and her family will celebrate Thanksgiving at the home of Jason Cranford, the director of the Hope Foundation, which grows the legalized cannabis on a farm in Colorado. Others from Georgia will join them for lunch. Prayers will be offered for the children along with prayers that soon they will be home.

-- Richard Hyatt is an independent correspondent. Reach him at hyatt31906@knology.net

This story was originally published November 26, 2014 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Richard Hyatt: Family has a reason to be thankful."