Multiple Severe Post-traumatic Pain by Anonymous

Gory details: a cannabis testimonial

I was never ever involved with cannabis in high school and graduated in 1976. No, not once. Although there were many friends around me that used it recreationally, particularly at school/work back then, I was not tempted even once, although I was offered the best time after time. I was just as happy with alcohol of any type.

Later, I had the chance to work like a dog as a knuckle dragging muscle bound roughneck.  Backthen, at 195 lbs, I could hold up a 30 foot joint(yes!) 415 lb. piece of drill pipe for 3 minutes off the pipe rack to win $20 dollar bets-but not today! I was never involved with cannabis before 1979.  On December 3,1978, less than a month after my 21st birthday, my world changed forever, when I,  knocked into the rotary table that turns your drilling string miles down in the ground and suffered a comminuted compound fracture of the tibia(shin) and fibula.

The tibia is so hard and dense a bone that it doesn't just break-it shatters like glass when slammed/bent against drill pipe. Then multiple fractures in an instant literally sicken you all over. It's like getting pinned in the driveshaft of a rear wheel drive truck or the PTO of a farm tractor. You already know for a moment that in your heart that you ARE GOING TO DIE-especially as the make up tong chains that tighten the pipe tool joints that will withstand several thousand foot pounds of torque wrap around you and tighten  to center as you  rotate and the links slice you up like a loaf of bread as they get tighter and tighter around your body--, all this after your leg is ALREADY broken and there are 4 to 5 inches of shin bone sticking though your pants leg, twisted around and around at each rotation because your steel- toed boot was pinned in a slip handle. I got hurt on account of a drunken tool pusher. An entanglement like that is invariably fatal per my OSHA interview. 

Thereafter in the hospital in reverse Trendelenburg position, putting my own tourniquet on, five units of O negative blood, i.v. access for more than two months in both arms(the first of several hospitalizations),before the hickman, groshong, portacath or cook central venous catheters of today. At the time I was discharged, 1981, I held the record of 97 days at that hospital for the Hoffman osteotaxis ys (external fixator, six stainless rods bolted together, three above three below (still got them)--it  weighed 14.1 lbs., and you dare not bump it into the side of a whirlpool bath, as your teeth will fall out--and a debrided cavity bigger than your fist, big enough to put in two whole rolls of kerlix gauze soaked in refrigerated ice cold saline, TO CRY LONG AFTER You HAVE NO MORE TEARS, where bone and muscle used to be. Pure unadulterated, crucifying, consuming, gnawing focused pain. The Demerol shots at 100 mg. just mercifully knock you out. There is adequate yet not appropriate pain management with high doses of Dilaudid and morphine-only  concrete constipation and more enemas.

 Thank God, I was hurting just enough to be turned on by a sympathetic former sister- in- law (Thank You, Kaye!!!), mid summer 1979 for pain control.

I acquired the ability of walking on a non-union broken leg below the knee(flexes and wobbles-be careful or you could recompound the bone out of the cast), so with a 1st buzz(genuine Thai sticks! Wow!), no crutches!!!

I could even bear to mash the clutch in my CJ jeep and drive around freaking out the girls with an obvious broken leg –never had a car wreck stoned either, and I promptly got rid of my beer and hard liquor because a mild buzz controlled the pain MUCH better than just plastered drunk.

 So with a bone sticking out like a ham,20 percent holding a foot onto my body, three failed bone grafts, three skin grafts, a muscle flap that now looks pretty impressive, a L-5,L6 broken back with discectomy (no fusion) with bone binding/grinding on bone of the vertebral column confirmed recently per x-ray.   Even our good Lord didn't get a bone broken.

Cannabis literally saved me so that I can walk/run again today after about 23 surgeries, and I am motivated and grateful. I probably qualify for medicinal cannabis but have taken a sabbatical like Dr. Russo.  I highly admire Dr. Grinspoon, along with Dr. Morgan.

 Speaking from experience, the effect is that the pain is altered,

obtunded, not obliterated per opiates.  Yeah, been there. Done that. What motivation  drives me onward? Oh, yes, multi-focal pain, literally 24 hours daily, not much but always there. I'm in cardiovascular medicine now and appreciate the medical justification for cannabis, ESPECIALLY freaking out the perverted prohibitionists with extensive surgical scars and this factually correct horror story.

And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall no longer be consumed with hunger in the land, neither shall they bear the shame of the heathen any more. Eziekiel  Ch. 34 Verse

 The greatest service that can be rendered to any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.    Thomas Jefferson

 I admire Dr. Grinspoon VERY much... Stay the course…