Oil on trouble waters
Constance Finley was an entrepreneur who traveled extensively for her own company making investments in low-income housing projects. By the time she turned 40, her health had started to decline, and she began having difficulty using her hands and arms.
Following shoulder surgery, suddenly both of her arms became unusable, and she had to stop working. Soon she was an invalid, locked in her California home. For 15 years, she only went outside for doctors’ appointments.
“For 10 years I didn’t have a diagnosis, which is very often the case with chronic diseases,”she says. “I was finally diagnosed with a severe form of ankylosing spondylitis with cubital tunnel syndrome on both sides.”
Ankylosing spondylitis is a form of arthritis primarily affecting the spine, and cubital tunnel syndrome is a condition that involves the ulnar nerve in the wrist, causing numbness or tingling in the fourth and fifth fingers, pain in the forearm, and weakness in the hand.
The drugs the doctors put her on, including the rheumatoid arthritis drug Humera, produced severe reactions and did nothing to alleviate her symptoms.
After a drug reaction that almost killed her, she reluctantly turned to medicinal cannabis as a last resort because it was legal in California, and after her near-death experience, her doctors refused to prescribe more prescription drugs. Much to her surprise, she found using medical cannabis to be“extraordinarily effective.”
WITH THE STEADY LEGALISATION OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA AND THE GROWING NUMBER OF POSITIVE STUDIES ON CBD, THE MARKET FOR CBD PRODUCTS—OILS, SOFT GELS, TOPICAL CREAMS AND
