My experience with medical marijuana
You are free to wiki the term medical marijuana to give you basic background to the california laws. My blog today is not about the legal terms, its just my honest reporting on what I experienced going though the adventure of getting a Rx, and acquiring some legal marijuana for Alie.The reason : The Symptoms
Alie has experienced recent intolerable hand pain, caused by either a mistake make in her most recent bypass, or just the effects of diabetic neuropathy. Her primary care Doctor prescribed dialudid or toradol, asprin , and PT. For Weeks I would try to get to sleep, listening to the cries of pain coming out of Alie, who didn't want to take Dialudid, and tried anything ; codoine, tequila, coffee and cognac... you name it, if we had it in medicine cabinet, it would find its way in her.
We started her on a anti-depressant Cymbalta which has a nice side effect of being the only drug you can buy why actually helps her condition. But as we all know MAOI's and other AntiDepressant's take up to 10 days to actually have an effect.
10 days... 10 nights ..10 LONG painful nights..10 more nights without sleeping.
There had to be a an answer that didn't include Morphine.
Then it hit us.. Why not try to smoke a bowl. ? Alie tried everything else.. might as well try. .
One bowl. instant relief !
Not the cure for what is ailing her, but it did provide about 1 or 2 hours of relief. For the long term needs PT, and medications which work to heal her damaged nerves. But you should have seen it.. For relief . ! this was quick and really worked.
While street pot in California is available, but as you can imagine you do have to deal with the same sort of characters you knew in highschool.. all very hush hush, hand me the cash, and take this.. thanks bud.. ya.. its real good stuff. you know its Indica . (whatever that is. ? )
Knowing Alie was going to need some POT for purely medical reasons, and living in Los Angeles, my 47 year old brain going slower went off.
Why not get a legal Rx for it.. and make my way though the maze of issues and acquire it Legally
A quick google search came up with plenty of stores and doctors who are will to prescribe marijuana for just about anything which bothers you.
First step is get a doctor to see you.
The office at 2804 South Grand ave is located in a old building with a nice green flag out front, Its sort of hard to miss a big pot leaf on a green flag, with something that says Marijuana Medical Clinic. Once inside, there was a bunch of chairs, weed posters on the wall a card table with lots of business cards of marijuana dispensary's
Once in the office there was the normal formality of filling out an endlist pile of forms. Most were similar to regular Dr's forms where you are asked if you have any of list of aliments. Funny thing is that I don't think the reason for asking the reasons are the same a normal Dr would ask. I think its there to support the prescription for weed vs.. o actually take medical history in order to evaluate the symptoms and determine a course of treatments only one of which would include the medication known as pot.
Also missing was anything reference to medical insurance. Medical marijuana doctors are not port of any HMO or PPO or Medicare plan. They take cash, green cash of course. The price to get a Rx runs 120 to 150, and the Rx is good for a year. A renewal runs 100.
As the caregiver I also get a RX and the ability to go to pot store and buy medicine for her. Also I didn't know with an RX we can grow up to 6 plants. But that is for Los Angeles county, if we lived in Humbolt country the same RX would allow us to grow up to 99 plants.
The Doctor was very nice woman The office consisted of room, with a desk from staples, the walls were had a few frames where in a normal Dr;s office would be inserted diploma's and certificates in this doctors office the inserts in these frames were the measurement of the frames and price tags.
The patient folders which are normally kept in normal Dr;s offices in neatly color coded systems indicating in some fashion only known the front office staff. that a yellow folder means patient last names beginning with the letter F to K.
In this office for some unknown reason all the patient folders were a nice dark green.
After a few general questions on how much Alie needs a day, does she smoke it, or eat it the Dr uses a stethoscope to listen her Alie's breathing, then signs some paperwork, and tells us that Duke in the front will explain how it all works .
Back to the front
Her is my RX as the caregiver. Its in full color with an embossed stamp on it.. a CC sized version is also given to me and alie just in case we need to show it to a police officer.
Asking Duke, where we could get our prescription filled he tells us of a nice new store which opened up on the corner of 3rd and main street. (one block from our house) He said they had the best medicine at very fair prices, and said these guys would be very helpful in selecting just what the DR ordered.
That was it, I have paperwork an address of an unmarked pot store 1 block from home. We were fast on our way to experience some California legal medical pot.
Once inside the store there was more paperwork, to register with the store..a phone call was made to validate alie's Rx and then we were invited behind mirrored doors into the showroom. You may not have thought about it, but a showroom smells like a grow rooms a very sweet pungent smell of sticky weed.
The showroom was maybe 10-20 with glass waist high cases with full of mason jars full of some of nicest looking high times photo quality but you ever would look at.
The tops of the counters have little sealed candy jars with a sample of each of the medication in it. This allows the patient to open any jar, take a deep smell or use one of the lighted magnifiers to get a real close look at the hairs and crystals of the various varieties of bud.
Also in the case is GUM.. which if you don't know is just the street name for Hash. That was it. Bud .. bud, oh yea some more bud, and about 10 different types of gum.
We started to ask questions about the meaning of the names of different pot and how they are grown. Our store only carries bud and gum, no edibles (candy cakes, brownies etc) Their reason is that the stores which are now selling edibles seem to be busted more often by the feds than the ones who just stick to bud. Something about the FDA not approving Pot as edible.... sounds strange.. but thats what we were told.
This store sold by the gram 1/8 oz 1/4 ounce and 1/2 oz.
What we got (below) is 3 grams if different strains, they threw in two joints just for being a first time customer.. Once again cash only . But for 3 grams, all high quality, different flavors and two joints What would you expect to pay. ?
We paid 50 bucks.
As I sit down tonight, helping alie get some pain relief, making sure that the weed goes down easy I am watching "Into the Wild." Two things are are worth mentioning
One this story took place in 1990 /1991 At that time in my life I felt very much like main character.. I planned for a year to sell everything get into a Jeep and find myself in SouthAmerica taking the trans- continental hwy all the way down from here to central America to the tip of Chile. While I did make plans, got the maps, took Spanish lessons shopped for the jeep... Life happened and I fell in love and the trip which I hoped would have taken me from manhood to a wiser adulthood got delayed..The other is if you happen to see it, there is a scene which takes place in Los Angeles. He stumbles into a real nice bistro named Pete's Cafe.. That Bistro is the building I am living in now. Always fun to see your house in movies.
Take care everyone and hopefully in a week or so, Ill have my E-bike and pictures to share.
Bob
posted by Bob Lee @ 7:56 PM
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