Mother credits medical marijuana with helping teen daughter manage disease

CINCINNATI — Before Crohn's disease turned her world upside down, Lyndi Lou Carnal was a typical 14-year-old. The Justin Bieber fan had an infectious and beautiful smile. But things went south, quickly.
"When I look back and my mom shows me pictures and videos, it's kind of really hard to think that that was me," Lyndi said.
"When my child got sick, we did what every parent does. You take them to the hospital," Lyndi's mother, Tiffany Carnal, said.
The family made Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center its home away from home.
"We spent three Christmases, three Thanksgivings, three New Years. I mean, every single holiday, every single month, we were in-patient. I slept in a chair beside her bed and never left," Carnal said.
For a long time, Carnal never questioned the heavy drugs that doctors prescribed for her daughter.
"I failed her, because I did not read all those warnings and everything," Carnal said. "And when it says, 'May cause death,' they're not kidding."
But when Lyndi's care team began removing organs from her body, her mother wondered if chemicals in her daughter's pain medications were doing more harm than good.
"Eventually, her bladder and kidney was shut down, and she couldn't go to the bathroom," Tiffany Carnal said. "She was on Dilaudid, which is seven times stronger than heroin."
That's when Carnal heard about children whose families said they had been helped by medical marijuana.
"I got educated on the world of cannabis," Carnal said. "And then I was, like, 'I wanna give this to my child.'"
The initial response from doctors?
"You can't do that," Tiffany Carnal said. "It's federally illegal."
But she kept advocating for a new approach to control her daughter's pain.
"When you're on that high of pain medication, you're kind of in a daze," Lyndi said, describing how she felt after being given opioids. "And you just kind of feel like you're floating around."
Eventually, the mother and daughter duo said doctors at Children's Hospital agreed to give Lyndi a drug called Marinol, a synthetic form of cannabis.
"We saw wonderful results. We saw wonderful results," Carnal said. "I began then campaigning for the freedom of cannabis."
It's a campaign fully supported by Lyndi, who's made a remarkable recovery.
"My thing would be: Would you rather take something that's gonna give you the munchies and make you hungry or would you rather take something that's gonna put you in organ failure?" she said. "I didn't have that option and I went into organ failure and I had six organs of mine fail."
"She's on all-natural (remedies) now and healthier now than she has been," her mother said. "She's a miracle. Thank you, God."
Marijuana is still illegal at the federal level. Because that's the case, researchers can't even do clinical trials on it.
Both Tiffany and Lyndi Carnal want lawmakers to remove cannabis from the list of federally banned drugs.
WLWT investigator Todd Dykes reached out to Children's Hospital for comment. Hospital officials won't comment on marijuana until the law in Ohio becomes clearer.