Allow me to introduce myself...

Welcome to the Sacred Cannasphere! 

Allow me to introduce myself...

A not so short synopsis of the beginning...

Hey Ya'll!  My Name is Odilia or Odie if you wish...  Let me introduce myself.  I'm a 42 year old single mom of a teenage high school hockey player, a Latina born and raised in the Great State of Texas who now calls the midwest home, in good ol' Nebraska "the good life," I'm a USAF veteran, and a nurse!  I have been in several specialties both inpatient and outpatient.  I have been a nurse for 12 years and I was a medic in the Air Force for 5 years active duty and 2 years in the reserves.  That puts me at approximately, almost 20 years in the medical field.  In that time, I was a huge advocate for medicine because I was going to heal people with all the practices of modern medicine.  Until... I was diagnosed with Lupus.  I have been diagnosed with Lupus now for about 10 years.  For those of you who aren't familiar with Lupus, it's a systemic autoimmune disorder.  An autoimmune disorder is basically when your body is fighting itself and the outcomes are not great for your health and well-being.  With Lupus, this means it can effect any and/or multiple body systems an any given time or at the same time.  In these moments where my systems are off and cause all kinds of problems and symptoms that effect the way I function, well, we call those flares.  Flares have the capability to knock you on your ass and make you non-functional.  

Being what I consider, young-ish still AND not being able to function is some bullshit.  It's scary, it's depressing, it causes extreme anxiety, and makes me think, "is this the flare that is going to do me in?"  When I was first diagnosed with Lupus I was told over the phone! And took a really long time, about a year for my rheumatology team to give me this diagnosis.  Diagnosing Lupus is complicated.  Theres all kinds of criteria!  After getting my Lupus diagnosis I knew that this was the thing that was going to kill me and cause my life to go down hill from there.  

I began to look at the kind of treatment I was getting and a lot of it was being referred to other specialties that were related to my symptoms.  I have seen gastroenterology, hematology, allergy and immunology, cardiology, psychiatry, the pain specialist, and more...  One thing I quickly learned is that unlike the inpatient side of medicine there isn't always this ideal collaborative team approach when taking care of patients on the outpatient side, unless it's cancer and you end up on a tumor board.  I mean it happens but when you are seeing more than a handful of people they don't all get together to have party to decide what is the best course of action for their patient, in this case me.  

I was on 12 daily medications and then others that I took as needed so probably almost 20 different medications that were either meant for Lupus specifically or meant to treat all the manifestations of Lupus... you know the symptoms I was having.  I felt like shit all of the time, I didn't have the energy to take care of myself a lot of the time and when I attempted to live a full functioning life, it was like I was overdoing it and brining on the flares.  On top of all of this, being a nurse and not being able to function all the time... although, I was supposed to be protected under the family medical & leave act (FMLA), so when I did get sick I wasn't supposed to be punished.  However, as many of you may have experienced or know how that goes down in reality.  Although, I wasn't supposed to be punished for missing work due to my debilitating chronic condition, work was not happy with me when I couldn't be there.  In one of my positions as a case manager, my interim manager thought it would be okay to tell me, "I just want you to be here!"  Like I didn't want to feel good and go to work, like I wanted to be dysfunctional at home trying not to stress and relax so I can heal.  The idea that people think I don't want to be doing the thing that I love because they think I'm not at home feeling shitty and useless on a physical, mental, and emotional level makes me FUCKING DISGUSTED.

I got to the point where I ventured off looking for non-pharmaceutical ways to feel better.  I stopped drinking alcohol when I was first diagnosed and replaced that with water and energy drinks.  The energy drinks though were not much better.  I attempted to move my body to lose weight and keep my blood pressure in check to protect my kidneys.  I started to eat better instead of on the go, having easy to make processed foods, and instead of going out to eat all the time, I began to look at healthier options and cooking at home more.  All of these things helped but I still wasn't living the good life.

Once I noticed I had protein in my urine, which no one seemed to really care about, I had to do something.  Protein in your urine means kidney damage.  I began to ask my doctors what I can do... The answer was, "let's put you on a blood pressure pill to protect your kidneys."  I needed something other than steroid injections to my foot, the push for low dose steroids, or any other pharmaceutical.  It was a tireless fight to advocate for myself and as a NURSE!!!  I know the side effects of medications and the sad thing was, I believed and trusted my doctors like most people do UNTIL what we were doing wasn't working.  I didn't feel better from all the medications that were supposed to treat ALL the symptoms.  Some of the medications I was taking, for example, amitriptyline didn't work, and it was meant to help me from feeling like I had to pee ALL DAY, let me rephrase that, ALL THE TIME, it kept me from sleeping and woke me up from my sleep, so guess what the recommendation was... Let's put you on this better medication, but first. you have to fail this one!?  Well, I tried the better medication, a medication I considered an old man bladder drug because that is who I had given it to the MOST, as a nurse.  The other thing I kept hearing when I told my urologist and rheumatologist that I was still experiencing the urge to pee ALL THE TIME, was, "give the medication more time."  So, in the beginning, I did give the pills more time, but eventually I stopped, BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T DOING WHAT THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING, and in this particular case, keep me from feeling like I had to pee ALL THE TIME!

I had asked to see a clinical pharmacist so we could go over my medications and see what each medication I was taking was really doing to me physiologically.  You know... what were the side effects and what were the interactions between each medication, and what were the long term effects of all these pills.  Oh and we as healthcare people, just so you know, see these warnings, "SIGNIFICANT interaction" or something along those lines, and you healthcare people like nurses, and prescribing providers, and pharmacists see but just bypass because, we've been told, "oh it's only in patients on high doses of this medication," or "it really only affects like 1% of the people on it," or it's mostly for people with advanced age, or terrible livers and kidneys, yeah and immunocompromised people."  Those warnings are there for a reason and not all people physiologically react to medications the same.  That is another problem with pharmaceuticals and the way we hand them out like candy.  There shouldn't be this one size fits all recommendation for EVERYONE, but that is what we are taught.  Also, most research done in this country at least, the demographic for research studies is generally older white males, sorry but do I look like some old white dude!?  NO!!!  You can't put this one size fits all method in healthcare for treatments, but again this is what we are taught.

When I couldn't get into see a clinical pharmacist for whatever reason they gave me, they don't have one for specialty clinics, they only see people with specific conditions, and all the stars must align in order for ME to see one.  Polypharma... being on a shit ton of meds should be more than enough to qualify me to sit down with a clinical pharmacist and figure something out or at least have a conversation about ALL the damn pills I was on that weren't making me feel better.  No, I finally got to see a clinical pharmacist when I started going through peri-menopause and that was about a year ago, due to the fact I should not have hormone therapy as a Lupus patient and they needed to figure out a way to treat my peri-menopausal symptoms.

So I did it myself.  I started looking at every single one of my medications and seeing what ALL the side effects were, how they were metabolized, and even the duration one should be on these medications.  Side note, my psychiatrist prescribed me1mg of Ativan as needed for anxiety and insomnia.  Ativan shouldn't be used for insomnia and it's not a good medication to take daily for a long time because you can have some really unwanted withdrawal effects from it, oh yeah and it's HIGHLY addictive.  I found that several of my medications had interactions with each other, some were only meant to be taken for a short period of time, and some were not recommended for people with kidney issues.  So one by one, I stopped taking medications like pantoprazole or protonix (trade name) that I could take up to 20mg twice a day and guess what people, I still had heartburn and come to find out, some of my medications were causing the fucking heartburn!  A handful of them warned against dehydration that could lead to, you guessed it... kidney problems as well.  Oh, let me not forget to mention, I was prescribed promethazine for nausea but guess what, that shit knocks me out and there were very few anti-nausea medications I could take because my Lupus medication and most anti-emetics cause QT prolongation, fancy for could fuck up your heart, because QT prolongation leads to a heart arrhythmia called Torsades de Pointes, a crazy ass rhythm you hope to never see being a nurse.  First of all, how am I supposed to function being nauseated but at the same time being medicated on a drug that is taken to fuck you up, you guys ever heard of the purple drink, lean... maybe some of you.  It used to be a big thing in my teenage years where rappers would rap about being fucked up on that lean, purple drink with sprite... (just thought I'd elaborate).

So I turned to cannabis.  The things cannabis helped me alleviate, nausea, pain, inflammation, slowing down my gut, you know for people with (irritable bowel syndrome) IBS that causes them to shit their brains out or be constipated, anxiety (for me it helped anxiety but can have the opposite effect on some), depression, nightmares from PTSD,  asthma and symptoms from my restrictive airway disease, and all from one amazing LIFE GIVING plant.  I had used cannabis before as a teenager but I never used it for intentional healing.  I began to figure out how I was going to use cannabis as a therapeutic treatment versus for funsies, however, there is NOTHING wrong with using cannabis for funsies.  It's way better for you than alcohol, cigarettes, cocaine, and other illicit drugs.  And alcohol and cigarettes are legal and deadly.

I felt so much better and it was the start of my healing journey on a HOLISTIC level, mind, body, and spirit.