Twenty years in the dark

I was injured in an MVA 20 years ago which left me with a concussion, memory loss, soft tissue damage to my knees, arms, shoulders and hands, whiplash injury to my neck and low back with central disc damage in both areas, facial damage and lacerations. Within 1 year of these injuries I was put onto pain medication, which ultimately increased over the years to the point that I nearly died.

At the time of the accident, rehab was very limited and a wait list of over a year forced me to seek out alternative options. I was fortunate that within 4 months of the accident I found a local chiropractor who was prepared to take on my case despite the low recovery ratio I was facing. The doctors I was seeing just kept increasing the pain medication instead of finding ways to cope with it, which ultimately exacerbated the pain condition.

Luckily in 2005 I found a doctor that specialized in pain management. At that time I was on 320mg of oxy-codeine daily, weighed 83 pounds and was lucky to get an hour of sleep a night. I had about another 6 months to live and I was unable to function at all on any level, memory loss was worse, and the pain was not controlled. I tried several other medications, as I gradually came off of the high doses of narcotic medication, IV injections of muscle relaxants, light physio exercises, magnetic therapy, back wraps, many specialists and alternative therapies were tried.

As a result of the high narcotic regime I ultimately ended up with iron and Vit D anmeia as well as a torn esaphogus, stomach issues, fibromyalgia, arthritis in my arms, shoulders and hands, bursitis in my hips, a torn rotator cuff in one shoulder, on top of the underlying pain in my neck and back. All of this added to an already fragile recovery. It took years to recover some form of life with many relapses as my body was extremely fragile from the toll the narcotic regime took on it.

Reluctant to try any form of pain medication, as I had allergic reactions to many of the meds we tried, my doctor referred me to a cannabis clinic. I was reluctant to try this avenue as I did not want to be groggy all the time with the THC, and there was very little information out there as to what to expect from this treatment. I researched sites that were US based or European based, as there was little to none for Canada. I finally relented and while I started out on a 50/50 split of THC and CBD, I ultiamtely decided to try a regime of only CBD oil for daytime use, and THC for night time to sleep. The first few years was a learning curve with all of the types of providers, their products, and figuring out what types worked for what I needed. This was all done through trial and error, again as very little information was available.

I have personally had great success with this new regime, but not without some struggles along the way. I still have to be extremely careful of activities and restrict myself from overdoing things. It took many years of self discipline to figure out what worked for me and what didn't. Could I exercise, could I go back to work, my own self worth was severely tested many times over the years. I had always been active up until the accident occurred and not being able to do many things I loved to do, left me feeling lost, depressed and worthless.

I ended up developing my own methods of improvement over the years to cope with these feelings and improving my memory issues, but I still lost a lot of bodily functions and capabilities. It has been a long dark 20 years of learning to cope on my own with little assistance other than my chiropractor and pain management physician. I will never be back to where I was 20 years ago, but I can now do small things without being in agony simply from moving the wrong way. Of course, I still have many restrictions to my activities, my memory is not 100% and I have to be careful of re-injury with every thing I do.