My son has severe epilepsy. It affects his whole life. He has hundreds of epileptic seizures every day, with brain scans showing constant epileptic seizure activity, day and night, all the time.

He has tried more anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs) than I can remember. Some have worked for a few days, or a few weeks, and then they stop working again. Others simply have no effect, or make things worse. Most of them have horrible, awful side-effects.

Medical professionals don’t believe there is any real point trying other AEDs: once they have found that the epilepsy is resistant to several, it tends to be resistant to all. So what else might help? My son has tried the ketogenic diet, which was miraculously good when he was a small child, but has no benefit now that he’s a teenager.

But what of medical cannabis? There was a lot of publicity a couple of years ago when it was supposedly made available for people with severe epilepsy. But in practice, it hasn’t happened. Only three children that I know of have been able to acquire medical cannabis via the NHS, and those have only done so because of the publicity that their parents generated in the press. For too many others, obstacles have been placed in their way.

But I am determined to do what I can for my son and somehow allow him to try medical cannabis. His life is a constant battle, and his condition brings huge stress to bear on our whole family. Medical cannabis may be the only thing that can improve my son’s – and our – quality of life. I am going to use this blog to describe the process of trying to get medical cannabis, whether on the NHS or through other means, so that other parents and carers may know and understand what it involves. Wish me luck. Along the way, I’ll tell you more about my son, about epilepsy, about medication, and my experiences as a carer.