By Melanie M. Montoya
Volume 4 Issue 5
It’s time for me to open up!
I’m a huge Cannabis Activist…. I learned it, live it & mostly love it!
I suffer Brain AVM’s. Since age 14, I have had mini strokes, seizures, and “brain bleeds,” to be exact. In 2009, I developed a life threatening tumor growing in my cervical spine. I was given 3 weeks to make it here on earth.
I could feel my everything slipping away quickly. Its hard to multi-task, thinking about two weeks while barely remembering the last few hours. My pops drove me down to Arizona’s Barrow Neurological Institute and I had a ‘cervical laminectomy surgery’ – for 6 hours I was in surgery and despite a midway complication that required me to be flipped upside down for the rest of the procedure, I made it out alive. However, my entire body did have nerve damage, severe chronic pain, peripheral neuropathy, which was also painful, and damage to the nervous tissue of the spinal cord called ‘intractable spasticity.’
Now, having the mechanics in my neck damaged along with my central nervous system, I will NEVER be the same again. I’ve had lots of crazy life experiences dealing with this – mostly, it involves scaring the hell out of my family, my many loving friends, and sadly my son. I was on high dosage pills for 3 years while surviving as a single mother but stopped after I nearly drove myself off a cliff side road coming home from work in Los Alamos. I was SCREAMING and crying asking God to PLEASE help me out of this agonizing chronic hell pain I had daily since the surgery. Maybe he heard. I found an amazing new job, got a new home, started a new life for my son and I, and somehow made it through.
I discovered cannabis through a special friend and started my new found journey as cannabis patient. My life changed that day and all I can say is, LOOK AT ME NOW!! I am the happiest I have ever been in my life! I want to share my story to prove to everyone – If I can make it through the ringer and make it out alive naturally and healthy, SO CAN YOU!
No one will ever tell me that cannabis is a ‘street’ or gateway drug, or that it is addicting. It has changed my world dramatically and helped me in every direction. I have become such an advocate, and now learn it, live it and mostly embrace it as my ONLY healthy healing compound until I die. I would have not come this far without this amazing flower.
Have love and respect for Cannabis!
I hope this story can coach your through your journey too!
Be Blessed!
