NOW I HAVE HEARD IT ALL

I just hung up the phone with the wife of a patient. Her husband is quite elderly with severe total body arthritic pain. He was just admitted to a local hospital with a bowel impaction resulting from the opiates he was prescribed for his pain. I saw him a few weeks ago and I recommended a dosed cannabis therapy for his pain, but he never got started on the cannabis I recommended before the hospitalization. As the bowel impaction was resolved, the wife asked if they could start the dosed cannabis therapy. She was told “no” as “they” needed to FIRST stabilize his narcotics.

Are you kidding? That is what caused the problem he was in the hospital for. Had he started ANY cannabis product I recommended, most likely he would have required less narcotics and avoided hospitalization.

I don’t know whether the doctors didn’t believe Cannabis might be helpful or whether they thought Cannabis cannot be mixed with pharmaceuticals, but in either case they are mistaken. If they REALLY wanted to leave the patient STABLE prior to discharge, he should have been on the Cannabis I recommended when he left the hospital.

We truly need more physician education on Cannabis therapies.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Cannabis works and it is here to stay.

Author

Allan Frankel, MD