Hello from my new bungalow in LA! I've been in California for a month and a half now, and have had a chance to visit some doctors, so I figured it was time for an update. First of all, let's address the main reason I came out here, high-CBD medical marijuana. I have my California medical marijuana card and have basically been trying CBD in every form I can find, and there's a lot - pills, bud, edibles, tinctures, vape oils, topical lotions, transdermal gels, sublingual strips, etc. It's all awesome, but a lot is really expensive (and obviously not covered by insurance) so right now I'm trying to find the most cost-effective way to ingest it. I think the pills might be the best deal, but some of the other things work more quickly, so I'm doing a lot of experimenting with what works, how long it takes, how long it lasts, etc. I'm not being very scientific about it right now because I'm just excited about trying everything, but that will come. As of now, I can say that I feel like I haven't had pain as bad as I'd had pre-CBD, mostly because I can now actually treat it when I feel it coming.
Anyway, onto the non-weed doctors - the bigger hospitals/research facilities want nothing to do with weed here, even though it's legal in the state. I could go off on a tangent here about the need to legalize weed federally but I will not. I visited two pain specialists, one at UCLA and one at Cedars-Sinai. I was unimpressed with the doctor at UCLA - she didn't examine me, and she asked me what I wanted them to do for me, as opposed to offering ideas of her own. She also told me that I couldn't treat myself with medical marijuana and be treated by her at the same time because they don't know how weed reacts with other drugs. Then she gave me a coupon and prescription for Nucynta, a new opioid that's also supposed to help nerve pain. I'm not interested in being on opioids now that I've found CBD, so I didn't fill the prescription and decided to get a second opinion.
So today I went and saw a doctor at the pain center at Cedars-Sinai, and she was really great. She didn't say I couldn't use medical marijuana, did a thorough examination of my ribs, and had a lot of suggestions. She determined that the source of my pain was my cartilage, so she prescribed a few things to try to help it. One is calcitonin, a nasal spray used by people with osteoporosis, and a couple OTC things - Dona glucosamine and SAM-e. She also prescribed me some muscle relaxers to try for the pain, and gave me a prescription for physical therapy using an ultrasound. So I'm excited to try all these things because they're mostly new ideas to me, and they aren't going to get me addicted to opioids! I'm following up with the doctor in a month to see how everything is working. I'll update more then.
Also, not to gloat, but the weather in LA is AWESOME and I don't know why everyone doesn't live here. It's been really helpful for my pain to not have constant snowstorms, hurricanes and extreme temperature fluctuations - the sunshine does me good!
