I started to try and look online and see what other pain management supplements or medications I could use to help me. I did shout outs in my online support group asking others what they did and what I could do. It was truly one of the lowest times in my health journey. I tried all types of concoctions, tinctures, supplements. You name it, I tried it!
Many people in my support group, along with the medical world, and even the car insurance company had encouraged me to use cannabis to help with pain management. Never in a million years did I ever think I’d be rolling my own joints and smoking pot, but desperate times took for desperate measures. At the same time, for those of you who have never been in a position such as mine, you would see that cannabis has way less side effects than many of the different pain medications that I had been prescribed over the years and is way more natural. So, here I was learning about blending different “buds,” and having to purchase a grinder to do so. I remember in highschool seeing all of the “pot heads” look super out of it and thought that, that would be my experience but I was wrong. I watched different YouTube videos, asked friends of mine that use it, tried edibles, called into different shops to get advice and even went in person but I didn’t notice it to help with my pain like I had hoped. It was more like my brain wasn’t as focused on the pain but I still felt it and it made me feel just really tired.
Thankfully, I have an amazing pharmacist that is also a big cheerleader of mine and has been an amazing advocate. He explained that the College of Physicians has put out so many scary threats to doctors regarding prescribed pain medications that it has scared the medical community which has been a huge misconception and disservice to those, like me, that suffer with chronic pain. One day he excitedly phoned me up and told me that the College of Physicians released a new article revoking there stance on this subject and he encouraged me to possibly write them and tell them about my predicament and hope that they could help me find a new family doctor. At the same time, he had a lot of “ins” with the doctors that he had developed relationships with over the years. My pharmacist told me he would ask around and keep his ears open if anything came up. And that day came! He excitedly told me about a client that got a doctor in Campbell River and how nice he was. He gave me the doctors information and I called right away. I thought that because the front desk set me up with an appointment that, that was it and I thought, “wow, that was easy!” Until I had my appointment on the phone with him, I found out it was an interview to see if we were the right fit for each other. With a big doctor shortage in BC, he was getting phone calls from all over the island from desperate people needing a doctor. I told him all about my situation and he graciously agreed to take me on!
Going through this period in time, it made me really understand why there are people that turn to street drugs. When you all of a sudden get dropped, or for whatever reason lose your doctor or don’t have one when you desperately need one, you start to really think outside of the box, not that I ever did, but it truly made me see this crisis we are in from a whole other angle.
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