Tears streamed down Claudia Jendron's face this year as her doctor patted her hand and told her, after eight years of failed pain treatments for her spinal fusion-gone-wrong, "This is going to work, Claudia." She was talking about medical marijuana.

For “eight years of hell,” Jendron tried opioids, epidural shots and acupuncture in the hopes that she’d be able to sit down or go to her grandchildren’s birthday parties without having to leave and lie down. None of it worked. At one point, she considered checking into an assisted living facility to receive morphine before she tried medical marijuana.

Then, early this year, the 66-year-old upstate New Yorker got a prescription for medical marijuana to help what she called “excruciating pain." To Jendron’s surprise, her doctor was right about the weed. Two days after starting a tincture (a liquid cannabis extract dropped under the tongue), her crushing pain subsided to something manageable.

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“I can lean over and hug my grandkids without screaming anymore,” she said. “I went to a commitment ceremony in the park the other day, and I lasted all day long without any pain...It’s just, it’s amazing.”

New York is one of 29 states (plus the District of Columbia) that have legalized medical marijuana––a trend that 94 percent of Americans support, according to an August Quinnipiac poll. But on December 8, all of that could begin to change.

Congress has until that day to decide whether to include the Rohrabacher-Farr Act (also known as Rohrabacher-Blumenauer) in a bill that will fund the government through the next fiscal year. Right now, that law, made up of just 85 words, blocks the Department of Justice from using any money to prosecute medical marijuana in states where it's legal.

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H.R. 2029 - Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016

In May, Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushed back against the bill when he sent a strongly worded letter to Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress, asking them to oppose protections for legal weed and allow him to prosecute medical marijuana.

“I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime," Sessions wrote in his letter.

The bill's 2014 passage, with 170 Democrats and 49 Republicans in favor, was the first time Congress passed legislation that protected medical marijuana users and businesses. It meant that an attorney general could no longer send Drug Enforcement Administration agents (or use other government resources) to bust medical marijuana in states where it was legal.

It was in line with the Obama administration's 2013 "Cole Memo," in which Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the Justice Department would refrain from prosecuting medical marijuana businesses and users in states where it was legal, and that it would prioritize more serious marijuana offenses, like drug cartels and sales to minors. The policy marked a change for the Obama administration, where medical marijuana busts were once rampant.

With his letter, Sessions pushed Congress to end these protections. In a statement on Friday, Sessions announced that the Justice Department would halt the practice of guidance memos, and review Obama administration guidance memos on legal pot to see if they went too far.

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Sessions is known for being one of the nation's toughest critics of legal pot. He once said the KKK was "OK until I found out they smoked pot."

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