Category: Health

No news to me. I’m with the ~⅓ of patients in that study who gave up opiates completely. That’s what got me started with various drugs – inflammation and related pain. I’ve been through the orthopedic surgeries and all the medications that go along with it – before, during and after. The doctors will never say, because of course you’re just getting older. But I am inclined to believe all the metal in my midsection suggests the arthritis is more towards the severe end of the scale, and it’s not even my biggest health issue these days.

I’ll save my take on how it does with nerve damage for another study on that topic. The only thing I can say for sure about the weed, in my case at least is: I cannot use enough. The only two problematic issues I seem to have with Cannabis are: Can’t use enough, and waiting to start up again after a break when hyperemesis sets in.

Short for tolerance break. It’s what recreational Cannabis users do every so often to feel the most high, when effects start to diminish after regular use over some period of time. It’s what serious medicinal users do to avoid hyperemesis, before the endocannabanoid system eventually gets pushed out of whack after chronic use.

It’s been eight months since that episode. That appears to be about how long it now takes me to get to the hyperemesis threshold at a dose amounting to around 50mg/day combined throughout the day. I know this because I could feel it coming on this time, after carefully tracking and limiting my intake. I’m on day three off the weed, and keeping a real close eye on it this time around.

Day 1 was no biggie, a little uncomfortable, sorta easing out of it. Yesterday, the stark reality of not being medicated shone through. Radiculopathy is markedly more apparent, along with noticeable jabs from that lumbar job site, moving/reaching/stretching around under a car hood. C-spine invokes the same enhanced radiculopathy in the arms from that nerve root damage, only without the extra pain. Doing PT, stretching, whatever, is just excruciating. Keeping a cane nearby always.

I noticed mild sweats/chills several times yesterday, reminding me of the hyperemesis part where I was sweating bullets and feeling freezing cold at the same time. It’s difficult describing the non-psychoactive way Cannabis affects the brain. I’m calling it headspace. it’s a sensation – an actual physical sensation – I assume might be related to CB-receptor activity, or lack thereof. I could feel it starting to get to that point where things were about to go haywire pretty soon.

The medical community needs to pick up on this. I’m not talking about quack doctors handing out med cards. The surgeons and neurologists dealing with pain and spinal injuries have a safe, effective tool they are ignoring or poo-pooing for various reasons, mostly ignorance. Alternatively, people are given Neurontin and painkillers, often leading to gawd knows what other complications.

I’ll mention my experience(s) with Neurontin, because I now believe it is a dangerous drug masquerading as a safe catch-all for anything they don’t want to actually deal with. I took it for about three years during the time I was going through the shoulder business, along with Venlafaxine, and Tramadol at some point. It does work to ease radiculopathy, but it also developed a bad reaction in me. I say developed, because I was fine with it for awhile, the first couple years. But I became increasingly unstable on my feet, literally losing my balance at times for some reason. I can now point the finger at Neurontin, because of what came next.

I got off ALL the pharmaceuticals when I finally realized I was on the drug poison road to an early death. Then a malpractice episode followed by lumbar fusion got me into another Neurontin prescription. Damned if I wasn’t stumbling around again – right away! No other drugs in the system, except Cannabis. Tried it twice this time around, two different prescriptions separated by a few weeks. – same thing. it did something to my nervous system. The only question is what?

The doctors will tell me I’m just getting older, and these type things are to be expected. Ya think? It happens alot faster and hurts alot more when you’re all beat to shyt. Neurontin, Gabapentin, or whatever brand name they are using to fill the pharma coffers with it now: STAY AWAY!

Late Update, 17 March: It takes 3-4 days for the therapeutic effect to wear completely off, after which time the entire right side of my body becomes stiff and sore with radiculopathy to the point I do not want to move. Right quad is the worst, aching acutely, due to the moderately severe L4-5 damage. I’m not even sure where to put it on the severity scale, because Donner stopped talking after they realized what happened.

Imagine that, BEFORE it was repaired, on top of a fresh hip replacement, spending almost a year trying to get help from the VA. IMAGINE THAT.

Latest Symptoms Log entry:

4 MAR 22: After 3 years of going through all the medications, surgeries and rehab, it seems I’ve finally arrived at a steady physical state. Still struggling with the psychological aspect of re-calibrating my life, figuring out what I can and cannot do, how long it takes to do what I can, and trying to prioritize necessary activities. Not yet sure where the Cannabis hyperemesis threshold is. I’m using at a rate about half what I was before that episode. Some clues point to real success with the weed. I’ve noticed not always grabbing for the cane every time I get up after medicating. The paralytic muscle sensation clearly diminishes with THC. Neurontin has a similar effect, but also seems to make me dizzy. CBD certainly helps with sleep. I’ve noticed a few episodes of REM sleep coming back over the past couple months. There’s a whole world of nuances in the strains I can’t really distinguish except to say the Indicas seem to work better on radiculopathy, for me. C-Spine decompression stops the arms from going numb during the night. That is a big sleep loss factor. Skipping decompression just one session immediately begins a slide back into the overnight arm numbing. i have to be real careful with small, spillable stuff because there’s almost no sensation in my hands anymore. I’m doing an average of 2 hrs/day various PT stuff, mostly foam roller and decompression. Still pretty miserable, but I can see a way forward.

My share of low quality VA healthcare almost got me killed.

“A recent in-depth report found that VA administrators are overruling doctors’ decisions for the sake of cost control and keeping veteran patients in the VA health care system.”

Took me a year to get through that gauntlet after running into some provider issues. Now I spend most of my time sitting around crippled from malpractice.

It’s been hard learning how to use Cannabis.

16 JAN 22: Smaller more frequent doses is the ticket. I guess maybe I was lulled into a sense of sedentary life with the injury itself? High edible doses of Cannabis were mostly just helping keep me immobile. That, and wearing the brace when I’m not, seems to be the main thing providing muscle symptom relief. Sometimes I can actually feel them let go while sitting around toking the vape. But it’s fleeting and only slows the slide back into paralysis when I start moving around. I imagine if we’d had freely ongoing research with Cannabis over the past 80 years we’d probably already have an effective, time-release targeted medication for this.

Latest Symptoms Log entry:

16 DEC 21: Didn’t take long for a mostly vaping prescription to get old. It doesn’t seem like 4-5 times/day is hurting my lungs. I just don’t like the way it feels after some point past around 3 – hacking up more phlegm, etc. I’m going to try a modified micro-dosing scheme. All the articles on it I’ve seen talk about tiny 1-2mg doses. I was taking around 40-50mg doses 2-3 times/day before, but that led to hyperemesis and some uncomfortable excesses. When I tried microdosing a year ago, it did not seem to affect me at all. I’ll up that to around 5-10mg, 3-4 times/day. Should smooth out the peaks and valleys and still hopefully achieve better radiculopathy suppression.