Monday, May 23, 2016

A month of the Bud


Bud, THC, CBD, vaping, Sativa, Indica --- all new words and expressions two months ago and now used almost daily in my vocabulary!

More about those in a little while. I'll give some info as I understand them now as a new student of the substance. And post some pictures of what I have and how I use it. (That's the reason why this post is private as well.) Many people have asked for information, and how to start or consider using medical marijuana themselves.

The first prescription the doctor gave me was for 7 grams of marijuana per month. I was hoping to get some of the oil, which would be a month's supply, or then 30 days. I would be allowed to order 7 grams of product every thirty days, which is how Tilray's oil is packaged. The dried herb from Tilray is packaged in multiples of 5 grams.

[Side note: Tilray is just one of the legal suppliers of medical marijuana in Canada. All of them have an application process and the need of a doctor to sign off before approval.]

For several days after being approved, I tried to order the oil (or drops), but I was too late every time. The demand was too high and they kept running out. So, in order to not waste the first weeks of my three month trial period, I ordered 5 grams of dried herb (or bud), equal to 20 days on my prescription.

As posted before on this blog (The Bud and I below this post), I've used the dried herb by vaping. What is THAT, you say? Well, I refused to try medical marijuana if I had to smoke it. So vaporizing was the next logical step. A device heats a bit of the dried product, ground in a special grinder, to a high enough temperature for extracting the THC and CBD but too low to develop potentially harmful toxins. At this point, it seems a much safer option than smoking, and also cuts down on the odor.



My setup
In the picture above, there is about 0.25 g (my daily prescribed dose) on the small scale. From there, it would be put into the grinder which in this case consists of two parts with metal teeth. Moving the parts together like opening and closing a jar, the herb is broken down into much smaller pieces.

The herb is then poured into the top of the removable glass tube on top of the vaporizer. A remote control is used to turn on the heat and to adjust the temperature. I started off heating to about 200 degrees C, but have found that I prefer the process when "cooked" at around 196 degrees. This was when I used Elwyn,

What is the optimal temperature for heating cannabis?
Quote: "The range of temperature in which all cannabinoids evaporate lies between 157 and 220 degrees Celsius. As all cannabinoids have different boiling points, vaporizing the same bowl of herb at different temperatures will generate different results." (1

The tube is then connected to the vaporizer, the fan turned on and the bag fills with vapour. I prefer to let it fill slowly, and might adjust the temperature after a few minutes. There's no rhyme or reason, really.

When the bag is full, the vaporizer fan is turned off, the bag with tube disconnected and I just hold my thumb over the open end until ready to breathe or inhale the air. Something like breathing air from a balloon, I guess, but there is no pressure as from a balloon.

Usually I take about an hour to slowly inhale the vapour, while watching a movie on the iPad. And no, I've never felt "high" when I do it this way. Only once, when in a hurry, did I feel a little bit swimming or light-headed. That's the beauty of vapourizing, really - the effect is quick and can be stopped immediately when undesired symptoms are felt. At that point, I just sealed the tube with plastic and tape and left it for the next day.

The drama started when I couldn't refill my prescription at the end of the 20 days. I still had 2 grams left, but had to buy a minimum of 5 grams - which the system wouldn't allow. Even phoning Tilray and explaining the situation, didn't help. I had to wait for a next appointment with the prescribing doctor to ask him to adjust my prescription.

It was not a total waste of time, though, since they welcomed the feedback about not being able to get the oil. I now have a little bit more leeway to order either dried herb or drops, and to be able to order again before the 30 days run out.

Drops - finally!
As usual, it is feast or famine, and my order of the drops plus dried herb arrived together on the same day. The picture below shows the two items together.
Elwyn, my first order, was a Sativa strain. Bubba Kush is an Indica strain, with higher THC where Elwyn has a higher CBD.


Indica seems to be most often used for pain relief and to relax and help with sleeping or anxiety. Sativa can be useful when taken during the day, to fight depression and also to control pain and anxiety.
There are also Hybrids, where the supplier mixes the two strains together to generate a desired target for a specific range of medical problems.

THC and CBD: THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) and Cannabidiol (CBD) are the two main ingredients in the marijuana plant. CBD and THC are  compounds known as cannabinoids. THC is the most well-known cannabinoid, but CBD has gathered attention from the medical community. THC is generally regarded as the psycho-active ingredient, while CBD is non-psycho-active.

In the picture above, it is clear that my first try with the drops is an equal balance between THC and CBD. My daily prescription is just under 1 mL of oil per day. The advice is to start slowly, with only a few drops, and to wait up to two hours to see what the results or effects might be.

I drew up about 0.3 mL of oil, squirted it directly under my tongue and waited a minute before swallowing. There was no unwanted reaction and no "high" or anything I don't want. Later in the day I took a few more drops, to come to less than 0.5 mL of oil - still almost half my daily dose.

The container and dropper from Tilray are very easy to use. I draw the 0.9 mL into the dropper when I take my first dose, squirt about half under my tongue and put the dropper back without emptying it. Whatever is left, is then my second dose. At this point I still prefer to split the daily dose rather than taking it all at once.



Results
After a few days of using the oil, there is definite improvement. I'll do a post on the open blog about trying to wean off Cymbalta, and the miserable withdrawal my body goes through in the process. I started weaning off in April, but it is a slow process. It seems the marijuana helps to even out my mood, helps me sleep better, and I definitely have more energy. It has only been a few days, though.

The oil can be added to "medibles" (edibile cannabis), put in yogurt or a smoothie. It can be used topically on painful joints. I prefer to take it straight up under the tongue. Much less hassle than vaping, much quicker, and easier to control.

Copied from Edibles 101:
Many of us new to cannabis-infused foods (also known as "edibles") fall victim to the same mistake: we eat too much. Edibles are a great choice for patients when consumed responsibly; they're potent and body-focused, meaning they're perfect for people who suffer from pain, nausea, or lack of appetite.

Unfortunately, they can easily lead to disaster if you’re not careful. You eat a whole brownie and feel normal for an hour, then all of a sudden you startle at a police siren and think everyone in the room is secretly laughing at you.
(Link )
BOTTOM LINE
Each person is different. If you consider using medical marijuana for a certain condition, my advice is to read and research, ask questions, and to go slow. Whatever you do, don't be alone for the first try. It takes a while before the effect can be seen, just as with many prescribed medications.

DISCLAIMER
This blog is purely to share my experiences as I journey into the new world (for us!) of marijuana for controlling my various medical issues. Only a few months ago it was something I would never even consider, but already see the benefit. And hubby, staunch protester about the use of cannabis, now encourages me when it is time to take another dose. He notices a positive difference. 

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Letters to Parliament -Lyme Disease



Huge steps have been made on the Lyme Disease front.  There is a federal conference in May (in Ottawa), with the outcome being the development of a strategy by the government. This will dictate the treatment for Lyme disease in Canada.  Jim Wilson, president of CanLyme, writes: 
Bill C-442 requires government to engage patients and their experts for the upcoming conference, BUT the legislation then hands over the development of the federal framework and writing of the report that goes to parliament to the federal Minister of Health.  This is wrong ... we should be involved in the development of the framework and the writing of the letter that goes to parliament.
 We need you to send the letter below – simply copy and paste – to ensure Canadians will receive PROPER Lyme treatment IN CANADA.  This will save lives, money, jobs and possibly relationships.  Please feel free to pass this along to anyone else who can support us. Please do not post this on an open forum like Facebook. Only share with others who might be able to help. We are not trying to go viral. Hence posting under a password protected blog. 

You can start your letter in any way you prefer, citing personal stories or the knowledge you gained over the years. You know that Canadian Lyme patients have been denied proper treatment for years. My own and other people's treatment was halted unexpectedly as you can read on my public blog "More Lymies lose their doctors
If you have any questions, or need further information, please do not hesitate to contact me.  I am more than happy to answer any of your questions. 
Thanking you in advance for your support – as in the past!!!
Lyme Patients need Representation!
  The National Conference is May 15-17 in Ottawa.  We all have a lot riding on this conference, but what happens after the conference is going to be even more important. According to the wording of Bill C-442, the federal Minister of Health is to write a report that develops Canada's federal framework for Lyme disease and has one year from the date of the conference to present it in the House of Commons.  Of course, Minister Philpott is not actually writing this report.  That task will be assigned to Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada.  At this point all transparency and patient representation stop!

To ensure that all of the evidence-based science will be fully reviewed in a balanced and unbiased manner, we are starting a cross-country letter campaign.  We have the letter ready, you just need to send it to the Minister of Health, the Honourable Jane Philpott, asking that she allow CanLyme and its advisors oversight in the development of the framework along with an explanation of why this needs to be ensured. At the same time, we will all need to copy 7 other politicians on the letter being sent to Minister Philpott.

Please ask friends, colleagues, neighbours and family to also contribute to this important campaign!  It is not a big job; it will only take a few minutes as the letter is written and all but two of the email addresses you need are provided.

To be heard, we are really going to need hundreds of letters to be sent before the National Conference begins.  This the ideal time to send our letters!

This is how to create your email to Minister Philpott:

1.  The letter is pasted below these instructions.

2.  Once you have read the letter, open your Inbox, pull up a new email page, and copy and paste the letter into it.  You are sending just one email but copying several other politicians at the same time - easy!

3.  Be sure to type in your name and your full home address at the bottom of the letter, that is important.

4.  Minister Philpott's email address is Jane.Philpott@parl.gc.ca.

5.  In the CC address bar of the same email, cut and paste:      
justin.trudeau@parl.gc.ca;
rona.ambrose@parl.gc.ca;
thomas.mulcair@parl.gc.ca;
Elizabeth.May@parl.gc.ca
premier@ontario.ca
ehoskins.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org

You will need to find your Member of Provincial Legislature's email address - http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/members/members_current.do?locale=en

And, also you need to find your Member of Parliament -
http://www.parl.gc.ca/Parliamentarians/en/members


The Sample Letter: Copy and paste, make changes and send

April 2016
The Honourable Jane Philpott, PC, MP
Minister of Health
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON  K1A 0A6

Dear Minister:
Canada is about to embark on developing a national framework for Lyme disease, but utmost care will need to be taken to provide transparency and a balanced viewpoint so that the framework is not influenced by bias. The legislation, Bill C-442, assigns you, as Minister of Health, full responsibility for developing the framework and for writing a report to Parliament. It appears that once the national conference is over, any participation by patients and their experts ceases. This will mean that there is no mechanism in place for fair and equal representation of the patient in the actual development of the framework, and once again, that responsibility will be ceded to a strictly political and bureaucratic process.

For decades, Canadian Lyme patients have been denied access to sufficient antibiotic treatment due to a very restrictive set of treatment guidelines written by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and endorsed by the Association of Medical Microbiologists and Infectious Disease of Canada (AMMI of Canada).  Treatment failure and patient harm have resulted.  In order to regain a good quality of life, thousands of Canadian Lyme patients have had to resort to paying out-of-pocket for American healthcare. Several thousand more patients do not have the ability to pay for American healthcare, and having no treatment options here, they are forced to suffer the severe debilitation of late-stage Lyme disease. Fatalities have resulted.

The National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) is an American government institution relied on internationally as a trusted source for treatment standards.  The 2006 IDSA Lyme Disease Treatment Guidelines were delisted from the NGC in January 2016 because the authors failed to meet a mandated review deadline. The IDSA has acknowledged that it will take two to five years for all the evidence-based research to be reviewed and a new guideline prepared. It is important to know that several of the authors, who will once again be writing the new set of guidelines, have long lists of conflicts of interest.  Are you aware that the Attorney General of Connecticut charged the authors of the IDSA Lyme disease Treatment Guidelines with conflicts of interest in 2008?

With their removal from the NGC, the 2006 IDSA Lyme disease Treatment Guidelines are now outdated and fail to be a trusted source of treatment standards. Yet all of our federal, provincial and municipal government websites (and literature) on Lyme disease continue to cite the IDSA guidelines!

When Canadian patients resort to paying out-of-pocket for treatment in the United States, they consult with physicians who are members of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS).  The 2014 ILADS Lyme Disease Treatment Guidelines have been listed on the National Guideline Clearinghouse since September 2015.  Before being listed on the NGC, the 2014 ILADS Lyme Disease Treatment Guidelines had to pass a very strict set of criteria developed by the Institute of Medicine which proves them to be up-to-date, trustworthy, evidence-based and reliable.  Months after their NGC listing, there is still no government Lyme disease webpage/literature in Canada that refers to the 2014 ILADS Guidelines as a source of information for physicians.

Knowing that volumes of the most up-to-date, evidence-based research was reviewed in the preparation of the 2014 ILADS Guidelines, why has the AMMI of Canada not endorsed the 2014 ILADS Lyme Disease Treatment Guidelines? Are they still firmly holding on to the IDSA dogma and resistant to change?  We believe this is the case and this does not give us confidence that the federal Lyme disease framework will be written without bias.

When the Planning Committee for the National Lyme Conference met on January 29, 2016, PHAC's summary of the replies received in their June 2015 online consultation on Lyme disease was reviewed. Some members of the committee expressed concern that bias had been shown in PHAC's summary of the replies. The quote below comes from the January 29th Planning Committee Meeting summary.   

    "Some planning committee members raised concern about:
  • a disproportionate emphasis placed on reporting feedback from the comparatively small percentage of health professionals who responded
  • the context given in the report seemed to be reiterating the status quo with regard to the current use of clinical guidelines from the Infectious Diseases Society of America."

As a result, the Planning Committee decided an "outside contractor" will need to be hired to do further analysis of the data and to compile a summary for the Committee. It must be ensured that this individual is impartial.  Clearly, it would be a conflict of interest for this person to be selected from the list of freelancers who rely on income acquired through PHAC contracts. 

The Institute of Medicine (USA) now requires that the key stakeholders, the patients, participate in the development of all treatment guidelines. Therefore, the development of our Canadian framework should follow the same principle, but currently there is no provision for patients and their advisors to have oversight in the writing of Canada's Lyme disease framework.  The Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation is a partner in the planning of the National Conference, and it would be appropriate for CanLyme (and its advisors) to be a partner in the development and writing of “the report that sets out the federal framework” for Lyme disease.

Minister Philpott, will you provide for patient representation as well as transparency and oversight in the development of the federal framework for Lyme disease including the report to parliament?  I look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely, 

Your Name
Your Address

 cc Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Hon. Rona Ambrose, Hon. Thomas J. Mulclair, Hon. Elizabeth May,
    Type in Your MP's name, Your Premier's name, Your Health Minister's Name, and your MLA/MPP's name

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

The Bud and I







NOTE: I’m writing this interview with hopes it might help someone else. Not to offend anyone. COPYRIGHT firmly in place.
THE BUD AND I - Start of a journey


Imagine your grandmother smoking a joint. Funny? Maybe not.
I grew up being told drugs and marijuana are “bad”, certainly not to be touched. I’ve never seen MJ, nor thought about it, and wouldn’t have known if I had smelled it being used. Yet here I am: a pot user.
Our younger son, who was in grade 12 when I got sick with Lyme Disease and saw the decline and changes, has always been very supportive. He has been nagging me for months about trying medical marijuana. I have several conditions which appear on the list. Hubby wouldn’t hear of it, though. And I wasn’t excited about the prospect, never having smoked. But Theo persisted. He did a lot of research and tried to educate me about the various strains, the conditions it might help for and the various ways of using the weed.
I started thinking about all the medications pumped into my body since 2010: Four kinds of antibiotics a day, for more than 3 years, the damage they did and the long list of side-effects each bottle came with. Plus the meds I had to use to counter the side-effects. So, how bad could the cannabis plant be?
In February I saw my Lyme specialist in New York state, since we Lymies still can’t get doctors here in Canada to treat us. She determined that my Lyme, as well as the co-infections of Babesia and Bartonella are still active. Coupled with the brain tumour which was partially removed in September 2015, she floored me by recommending marijuana as possible help for these conditions.
Is it legal?
Any physician in Canada can prescribe medical cannabis, and once you and a doctor have completed all of the necessary forms you are legally able to purchase your cannabis directly from one of Health Canada's *licensed producers. The package ships directly to your house, or  to your doctor.
What is the dose?
Ah, young grasshoppers, that is the question! It seems each person reacts differently and there is no real guideline as to how much is enough. You can’t overdose; the body just gets rid of the extra. And no, I am not “high” and certainly don’t aim to be!
Where do you start?
I completed an application to Tilray, a licensed producer. A doctor called me in for an interview about my diagnoses, prescriptions and conditions. He completed the forms and submitted them directly to Tilray, who set up my account after approval and perusal. I am allowed a small amount per month, ordered online or per phone.
How do you use it?
Google is amazing! And younger son brought a vaporizer and made sure I wasn't alone the first time I tried -- a warning also posted on the paperwork with my first shipment. Vaping (drawing in the vapour) is one of the best ways of getting the full benefit.

I’ve ordered a strain (Elwyn) and have been using daily by grinding, heating and catching the vapour in a bag, then inhaling over a period of an hour.
Steps one, two and three on the Tilray prep mat


The oil, which I really would prefer to use rather than the bud itself, is constantly out of stock. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some in the near future and will then be able to just use a drop sublingually (under the tongue) or in a vape pen like this one I bought from Tao.

Vape pens
The pen comes in various colours and is USB charged. The mouth piece and middle part screws off and can be changed to a capsule which holds the oil. A small coil heats the dried leaves or oil and the vapour is inhaled. No combustion.


After ten days: Yes, I sleep better. Yes, I think my pain is more under control.
*Health Canada has lots of information, lists and answers.
*Tilray is one of the suppliers approved by Health Canada



Sunday, October 23, 2011

Placeholder

This blog is currently not really used, but might become some spot for photography.


The one used more often is Meerkat's Heap, if you want to take a look.