Moriah Barnhart watched her napping daughter, Dahlia, cuddled up in a metal hospital bed. Since Barnhart was a little girl, she loved to watch people sleep. On this day, she focused in on her 2-year-old’s breathing pattern.
In and out. In and out.
It was a rare moment when Dahlia would fall asleep. So rare that the doctors had left Dahlia and her mother in peace for the night, so they could take advantage of her rest.
In and out. In and out.
Then, Barnhart heard a gurgling noise coming from her daughter. When Barnhart moved her from one side of the bed, to prop her head up, she realized something horrifying.
Dahlia had stopped breathing.
Her limp body felt like a doll in Barnhart’s arms. Barnhart rushed out of the room on autopilot. She made eye contact with one of the nurses at the station.
I need her, Barnhart said, pointing to her daughter’s nurse.
Then, she looked at another.
And you. And a doctor. I don’t think she’s breathing.
Instead of a panicked mother’s cry, Barnhart remained calm and articulate. Then, she realized the extent of what had just happened. She changed her story.
She’s not breathing!
The rest was a whirlwind. Barnhart went back to the bed to lie with Dahlia. Doctors and nurses poured into the room. Chatter erupted in the halls. Mother and daughter were rushed down the hall in the bed together.
“She was dying,” Barnhart remembers.
The team of medics were able to revive Dahlia, only to have her stop breathing again. And then once more.
“If you saw it in a movie, it would look so unrealistic,” Barnhart says. “It looked so sci-fi. There were machines and tubes, metal clamps.”
Barnhart stood in a haze, watching the doctors buzzing around Dahlia in the ICU. Blood spattered the sheets, the floor, gloved hands. She came face-to-face with one doctor. His eyes told her that she didn’t belong there.
Outside, a nurse was crying in the hall. Shocked.
Dahlia was being treated at St. Jude Children’s Hospital, in Memphis, Tenn. The hospital doesn’t have an emergency room. Many of the nurses had never experienced a patient like Dahlia.
Dahlia has an aggressive form of cancer, pilomyxoid astrocytoma. A brain tumor had been growing since she was just an infant, pressing against parts of the brain that control sleep and breathing.
The family uprooted their lives in Plant City to move near the hospital. They spent day after day in cold hospital rooms. Barnhart was forced to ponder the life-threatening situation that had been all of Dahlia’s existence. To cope, Barnhart began writing a letter that took her hundreds of hours over a period of six weeks.
How did it get to this point? And what can she do to stop it?
TINY DANCER
As far as Barnhart and doctors could tell, Dahlia was born September 2010 — a healthy baby girl.
But soon, Barnhart began to notice some eccentricities about her second born. She never slept. She was sensitive to light and sound — so much so that she didn’t like to watch TV. She had a short attention span and was unusually clingy.
Then, she loved to dance. Even when she was in the middle of throwing a temper tantrum, all her mom had to do was start humming a tune. She would begin to dance, despite the grimace on her face.
“I though she was just the next Einstein,” Barnhart says.
Then, the night tremors began. Barnhart thought they were because of low blood sugar. She vowed to keep and eye on Dahlia and take her to the ER if they hadn’t stopped by the end of the weekend. But, when Dahlia begin to vomit, Barnhart rushed her to the hospital.
A scan revealed a mother’s worst fear. A mass had engulfed an area of Dahlia’s brain. She was diagnosed May 5.
“Spread out over the course of several years, those once seemingly unrelated symptoms suddenly became one,” Barnhart says.
Dahlia also had fluid buildup on the brain that required immediate surgery. The surgery could have caused her to go deaf, blind or paralyzed — if she didn’t die.
But, Dahlia survived. Still, she suffered some paralysis on her right side.
More seizures led Dahlia to take two anti-seizure medications, on top of a never-ending list of other pills and injections. Dahlia struggled through the treatment. Barnhart spent nights listening to her daughter’s screams. She also had bizarre mood swings, fits of anger in the middle of bouts of laughter.
“Our lives had become this nightmare,” Barnhart says.
Eleven hours before Dahlia was to undergo chemotherapy, St. Jude contacted Barnhart. The cancer was much more aggressive than they had first thought.
The mother and daughter left to find help in Tennessee.
CONTROVERSIAL SOLUTION
On June 10, 2013, Dahlia was put on her first round of chemo.
She also was put on a cocktail of medications. Methotrexate left gaping sores in her mouth. Cisplatin and morphine turned her into a zombie. She spent groggy days not recognizing her own mother.
Barnhart saw that chemotherapy and strong drugs were ripping her fragile child’s body apart.
There had to be another solution.
That’s when she started researching medicinal marijuana.
“I’m not against conventional medicine,” Barnhart says. “It has saved her life several times. But, I was forced to do this in handcuffs, watch my child go through this every day.”
Barnhart believes certain compounds in marijuana not only can help with symptoms, such as nausea, but also that it can do much more to physically fight the cancer.
She’s not alone.
“Combining the two most common cannabinoid compounds in cannabis may boost the effectiveness of treatments to inhibit the growth of brain cancer cells and increase the number of brain cancer cells that die off,” the Journal of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics reported.
Researchers at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute found the combination boosts the inhibitory effects on glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive form of brain tumor.
Barnhart has been scouring the web for similar studies, making calls to researchers out of the United States and talked to doctors behind the scenes. She says a large majority of medical professionals to whom she’s spoken support the use of medicinal marijuana.
Barnhart has started an online petition to allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes. She is asking friends, family and believers to sign it.
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist,” Barnhart says. “I never thought I’d be in this position. But, I’m just trying to make people see.”
Contact Amber Jurgensen at ajurgensen@plantcityobserver.com.
HOW TO HELP
For more information, visit her website, dahliastrong.org, or her Facebook page.
To donate to Dahlia’s medical expenses visit fundrazr.com/campaigns/4VRu9.
DAHLIA’S LAW
To sign Barnhart’s petition to allow medicinal marijuana use, visit https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/dahlias-law-legalize-medical-marijuana-end-suffering-americans-you-attempt-end-suffering-elsewhere/SWlzDnSs.