Charlotte Figi, the Colorado Springs girl who, as a gleeful
and fragile child, launched a movement that led to sweeping changes in
marijuana laws across the globe, has died from complications possibly related
to the new coronavirus.
She was 13.
Charlotte’s death was announced by a family friend Tuesday
night on the Facebook page of her mother, Paige Figi.
“Charlotte is no longer suffering. She is seizure-free
forever. Thank you so much for all of your love,” read the post, which also
asked the public to respect Figi’s family’s privacy.
Paige Figi had posted in recent weeks on Facebook about a
serious illness that sickened all the members of her family with fever,
coughing and breathing difficulties and sent Charlotte to the hospital.
In an update Wednesday to the Facebook post announcing
Charlotte’s death, Paige Figi said the family did not initially meet the
criteria for testing for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, so
they self-treated at home, as instructed. Charlotte’s symptoms worsened, and
she was admitted to the hospital on April 3, where she was tested for COVID-19.
The test result came back negative — though the coronavirus
test has been beset with false negatives. Figi wrote that Charlotte was treated
on a floor designated for COVID-19 patients, “using all of the medical
protocols set in place.”
She was discharged from the hospital on Sunday, after her
condition seemed to improve. She suffered a seizure Tuesday morning resulting
in respiratory failure and cardiac arrest, however, and she was taken back to
the hospital, where she was treated “as a likely COVID-19 case.” Figi said
seizures commonly occur along with illnesses in children like Charlotte with
Dravet syndrome.
“Her fighting spirit held out as long as it could and she
eventually passed in our arms peacefully,” Paige Figi wrote.
Early Wednesday, the Realm of Caring Foundation, an
organization co-founded by Paige Figi, wrote on Facebook that Charlotte’s death
was due to complications from COVID-19. But the organization later amended the
post to remove the reference to the coronavirus.
If her death is verified by public health officials as
related to COVID-19, Charlotte would be the youngest victim of the pandemic in
Colorado so far. A spokeswoman for El Paso County Public Health said Wednesday
that the department cannot comment about individual cases. But she said the
county, at least yet, does not have any confirmed pediatric deaths from
COVID-19.
“Your work is done Charlotte, the world is changed, and you
can now rest knowing that you leave the world a better place,” the Realm of
Caring Foundation wrote on Instagram.
Dravet syndrome is a rare and debilitating form of epilepsy
that first appears when children are young. From the time she was just 3 months
old, Charlotte suffered hundreds of small and large seizures a day.
Pharmaceutical treatments proved ineffective, and, by the age of 5, Charlotte
struggled to walk and talk and required a feeding tube.
After hearing about a family in California that treated
their child’s seizures with oil made from cannabis, Paige Figi began to
research the possibility and soon connected with a Colorado Springs medical
marijuana dispensary owner named Joel Stanley, who, along with his brothers,
had helped developed a strain of cannabis rich in cannabidiol, or CBD, a
non-psychoactive compound.
Courtesy of a colleague
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