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27 patient focus cannapatientcare.com october 2022 | cannabis patient care Medical Cannabis Helped Beat the Odds: Brooklyn Hall's Fight to Survive Brain Cancer B Y M A D E L I N E C O L L I N O PARENT EVER wants to hear that their child has cancer. It is a soul crushing moment where all time stands still, and hope feels lost. As a parent, all you want is for your child to be happy and to protect them. Receiving a cancer diagnosis and seeing your kid go through treatment that makes them sicker before they can feel better, is traumatic for parents and families because they can't take some of that pain and discomfort away. Pediatric cancer only receives 4% of government funding (1). It is not researched as heavily as more prevalent cancers such as breast cancer, prostate can- cer, and pancreatic cancer. For parents living through a pediatric cancer diagnosis, this realization can be a tough pill to swallow. One such family went through their worst nightmare. At the young age of three-and-a-half, Meghan and Kurt Hall's daugh- ter, Brooklyn, was diagnosed with anaplastic ependymoma, class 3, which is a rare and unique form of brain cancer. "This type of cancer is typically found on the brainstem, and it's usually found pretty quickly. But Brooklyn's was super unique. It was found in the frontal lobe of her brain, and it was the size of a baseball," Hall said. Due to its size, doctors immedi- ately labeled Brooklyn's tumor as cancerous. Once doctors re- vealed their suspicions, Brooklyn was intubated and rushed into emergency brain surgery. The Path to Medical Cannabis Prior to receiving her diagnosis, Brooklyn was hitting all her milestones like a healthy child. It wasn't until she had been sneezing for three days that her parents began to worry as the repeated sneezing had started to affect her equilibrium. Assuming it was just a sinus or ear infection, they took Brooklyn to the pediatrician which ultimately led them to the emergen- cy room where they performed the scan that disclosed the baseball-sized tumor residing in her brain. "It was massive. I'm surprised that we didn't see any symptoms sooner, but because of where it was in the brain, it had time to grow and hide," Hall explained. "She was immediately rushed into emergency brain surgery. The resection took 8 hours, but they removed the en- tire tumor. As soon as they did that though, Brooklyn acquired a traumatic brain injury (TBI) to her frontal lobe, and she was paralyzed on the right side." After the TBI, Brooklyn needed to relearn how to sit up, hold a cup, walk, and be re-potty trained, among other things. After 30 days in the hospital, Brooklyn was accepted into a research study at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Ten- nessee. At St. Jude's, she was treated with 33 rounds of radia- tion, a mixture of photon and proton beam radiation. For three months, she underwent this treatment until they were told she was "cancer free" and were sent home to enjoy their "new nor- mal." Then, 8 months later and just a week before Christmas in December 2018, doctors detected three new tumors. Brook- lyn was given a six-month terminal prognosis and discharged from St. Jude's because there were no studies targeting three ependymomas; she no longer fit in their study. Not willing to give up the fight, the Hall's sought treatment back home in New York for Brooklyn. Doctors suggested oral chemother- apy. "You're basically feeding your kid straight up poison and that's a lot to carry as a parent, especially when you're telling them it's medicine. We decided to try chemo because our doc- tors suggested it. And that will forever be my biggest regret as a mother—chemo," Hall said. "You're completely backed into a corner, overcome by fear, and you're given no good options. All your options are horrible, and you have to make the best choice possible. You're not given any good choices. So being in that position, you are desperate. You're desperate to save your kid and watching her slowly suffer like that, it's not anything I would wish upon anybody." When she was three-and-a-half years old, Brooklyn Hall was diagnosed with anaplastic ependymoma, class 3, a rare and unique form of brain cancer. At death's doorstep, her mother, Meghan Hall sought out cannabis as a healing treatment for her daughter. Rick Simpson Oil (RSO) changed Brooklyn's diagnosis and she is now living a cancer-free life. Here, Meghan details how cannabis helped Brooklyn and continues to help her live out her childhood.