Life With Chronic Pain

A few weeks ago, I went to my GI doc for a checkup after I got out of the hospital.  He is a very good Gastroenterologist and he specializes in diseases of the pancreas.

He was very perplexed why my pancreatic enzymes were so highly elevated, but they could find no other signs of pancreatitis.  I have none of the risk factors, I don’t drink, not fat, not old.

Also while I was there we talked about different antiemetics as the nausea drugs my PCP had prescribed me quickly stopped working.  I told him that marijuana had helped a lot and I asked him what he thought of Marinol.  He said that he rarely prescribes it, but there was no need for me to suffer.  So he prescribed me 60 5mg pills for me to try.

At the time I was looking for a job and I did not want to complicate things by having THC in my urine.  I checked with my lawyer and he said a company can legally refuse to higher you because of the prescriptions you are on.  That really surprised me.  So to keep things simple I decided to hold of on the Marinol.

Earlier this week, I decided that I was going to move back to LA and get a job out there.  In LA people are much more understanding about THC and marijuana as medicine.  With that in mind I was eager to try out my new script.

I woke up on Saterday morning with no real plans other than to look for jobs in LA and work on the bog, so I decided to try the Marinol instead of my usual Zofran for nausea.  I did some quick math and decided that good pot is 20% THC by weight. So 1g or 1000mgs contain 200mgs of THC.  I decided that I normally smoke 250mgs at a time. 20% of 250mg is 50mg of THC.  The pills were 5mgs so I decided to take 2 and see how that worked.  The true test was going to be how I felt after lunch.

I knew it would take about 90 minutes to kick in so after about an hour I took the pills I began to feel it kick in.  It was very mild but pleasant.  I could hardly tell that I was stoned.   About an hour and a half after I took the Mariniol I decided to eat.  Usually, I get extremely nauseated after every meal.  But the Marinol effectively killed the nausea.

If I was extremely nauseated my first choice would be Zofran, my second choice would be smoked marijuana, and my third choice would be Marinol.  In my state medical marijuana is not yet legal so I do not smoke while I am here.  Zofran is very expensive so my insurance will only pay for 12 a month.  Ideally, I would take Zofran every day, but I cant .  That is were Marinol comes in to save the day.