Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Federal agents in Spokane raided several medical marijuana dispensaries today
enforcing federal law that makes selling or possessing marijuana illegal
but for some families, that drug is a God sended, treating a variety of deseases.
Two year old Cash Hyde was diagnosed last year with a stage 4 brain tumor,
he nearly died more times than his family can count
and was miserable from the high dose chemo coursing through his tiny body
until his dad turned to a controversial place and gave cannabis to his young son.
KXLY4 Melissa Luck is here and have been working on this story.
Yes, controversial, Robin, is an understatement.
Medical marijuana is a political football both here in Washigton
and in Cashy's home state of Montana,
But his father said to me: "when your child is dying of cancer,
you'll do anything you can to help".
His choice defied doctors he says, saved Cashy's life.
June 21st 2008, the day Mike and Kylie Hyde will never forget.
He was just a healthy little boy, born there in Missoula.
Cash Michael Hyde's very first birthday, a family now complete.
They never could have imagined the journey little Cashy's life would take.
He was just your average happy little kid and then, he just started to get sick.
It was shortly before Cashy's second birthday when dad Mike knew something wasn't right.
He started being very tired, sleeping a lot,
very crancky, he started to throw up, we started to take him to the doctor
and the doctor would tell us he had mono (infectious mononucleosis)
For six weeks, it's the same diagnosis over and over
but Mike refused to accept what doctors were telling him.
He knew, like any parent would, that something was terribly wrong.
I was like "It feels like he is dying in my arms, we need to take him somewhere else
you know, and so we took him to the E.R. and that's when they did a cat scan on him
and they found the 4.5 cm tumor in his brain.
They loaded him up and they were gone to Salt Lake City within a matter of couple of hours of finding the tumor.
At Salt Lake Primary Children's Hospital came the davastating news:
their little boy was facing incredible odds. Brain surgery revealed a peanut tumor wrapped around Cashy's optic nerve.
When we rearrived in Salt Lake in May, Cashy was so sick, I mean his eye was starting to get pushed out
He was sleeping 16 to 18 hours a day, he was vomiting,
He was pretty much as sick as you can get without being on your death bed.
Doctors cutted into Cashy's brain to remove what they could, only about 10% of the tumor
The Hydes could only hope aggressive treatment could get the rest.
3 rounds of chemo followed by stem cell rescue and 3 rounds of high dose chemo after that,
A difficult treatment plan for anyone, so imagine what it did to a 2 year old kid.
So the first night of chemo, we did 10 hours with the ceizures down at the ICU,
and you know, the doctors told us then, he got brain damage from the seizures,
we don't know where this is gonna be in the morning, just gonna have to wait and find out.
Cashy's spent his second birthday in a hospital bed, swollen and sick from the medication intended to save his life.
Doctors were uncertain he would make it to his third birthday.
This is overwhelming I guess, to say the least
and we had a lot of scary things happenned in June,
he got a blood infection and went into sceptic shock, went into the ICU and ended up coding
and they had to rescucited him, I was standing 2 feet away, I had to watch the whole thing.
There were a lot of days we were getting told we weren't going to beat it
You're not gonna take him home, he is gonna die
and those are the days when you really got to believe!
They believed and they prayed. High dose chemo was killing his cancer
but it was making Cashy sicker than ever.
He was taking 120 mg a day of 5 different drugs to try to make him comfortable,
but that, Mike said wasn't helping ease Cashy's pain.
End of September, he had gone 40 days without eating, he was vomiting 9 to 10 times a day,
he couldn't lift his head of his pillow, he was litteraly laying there, shivering in his bed
and the doctors came in and I said: "Is there anything we can do for Cash?"
The doctors had no answers so Mike found his own relief in the form of a controversial oil:
Cannabis. Illegal for you and I to possess and something Cashy's doctors wouldn't even discuss.
Mike got authorization to give Cashy the oil and without telling them why,
he told the doctors to ween Cachy off the nausea cocktail.
Inserting it through Cashy's feeding tube a tiny amount of oil replaced replaced all those drugs.
The result, Mike says was almost immediate.
You're watching a kid that hasn't had the world to eat in 4 months, 5 months actually take a bite of something.
He hadn't had eating a thing in 40 days and it was really incredible just to watch him take a bite
of a piece of cheese you know. It showed that he wants to live.
There you go! Yeah! Yes! Cashy!!!
Cashy did his last round of high dose chemo with no antinausea drugs.
Mike says the doctors told him they were amazed. Mike never told them why.
I wanted to tell them "Hey! he is on cannabis oil", but I was afraid they would take it away from him.
We wanted to tell you about the side effects, the possible dangers of giving medical marijuana to a kid as young as Cashy
but eventhough it's perfectly legal here in Washington and his home state of Montana,
We couldn't get a single doctor to talk to us on camera.
That's how we ended up here at the THC clinic in East Spokane.
And I see a lot of folks and they're coming from all walks of life and say they've received benefit.
Shari Allen is a nurse practitioner from Oregon. She comes to Spokane every couple of weeks
to evaluate medical marijuana patients and sign off on their permits.
What I try to do here at this office is creating an atmosphere that is truly medical
because I do believe that cannabis is medical and we are trying to use it as a medicine.
She believes in the power of this drug and its benefit for cancer patients.
She signs off sometimes on 50 patients a day.
Then I asked her about authorizing marijuana for kids.
It is not common, ok? And I am not going to say if I have authorized for a child.
It's a typical answer as doctors are concerned about federal law and company policies,
but Mike Hyde doesn't care about the controversy or about the political battle over this drug.
He cares that his son survived and he is convinced not only did the cannabis oil made Cashy feel better
it prevented long term damage to his organs.
For Mike, the living proof is in his vibrant 2 year old boy.
Yes it's very controversial, it's very scary but there's nothing more scary than loosing a child.
A week after we did this interview, Cashy was back in Salt Lake for scans
finding out he is cancer free.
He is back home in Missoula, back with his family, back to teasing his big brother Colty.
Cashy will spend his third birthday like every kid should,
with the fight for his life behind him.
And the sate of Montana estimates that of the 28,000 medical marijuana patients in the state,
51 are kids under the age of 18.
Now Robin, we tried to get those numbers for Washington but our state does not track
who has medical marijuana permits, who is allowed to get them, it's just simply not tracked
so we have no idea here in Washington,
And after today's raids we kind of understand it might be even longer before we have anymore answers.
That's right and that's something that we talked to the Hydes about at the time
we only did this interview a couple of weeks ago
and that the one thing Mike said whether you agree with it or not, every time they take down one of this dispensaries,
there might be a kid or someone in the hospital somewhere that depends on it
so everybody involved just wants the governement and the juridictions to just get sorted out.
And you can make comments on the story and let us know what you think on KXLY.com later on tonight. Thanks so much.
Well Cashy's family got tremendous support from friends family and strangers during his treatment.
Now they're paying it forward: The Cash Hyde Foundation raises money and provides things like
these reagge runners to children's hospitals. They donated several to Sacred Heart Children's Hospital earlier this month.
The vehicles are outfitted with IV poles so kids that are undergoing treatment can get out of their rooms and have a little fun.