13 Jun ‘I woke up with no pain’: Medicinal cannabis earns high praise from war vet
Like most war veterans Michael Ruffin, 78, is still paying for injuries he sustained while on active duty. During his deployment to Vietnam in the late 1960s, Mike (as he’s known to his friends) was involved in a horrific accident that left him severely injured and living with chronic pain for years to come.
Speaking to Starts at 60, Mike recalled the moment he miscalculated a helicopter jump in Vietnam and plummeted 20 feet through the air, hitting the ground below him “like a ton of bricks”. While he survived the fall, Mike, who served in the Australian Army for 27 years, was left with severe back and neck pain — pain that after decades never seemed to fade. He tried everything from physiotherapy to spinal fusion surgery, but nothing worked.
However, that all changed when Mike’s doctor introduced him to Dr Alistair Vickery, from Emyria (a healthcare technology and services organisation), who is a keen advocate for medicinal cannabis use in Australia. After being assessed by three doctors, two of whom had already operated on his back and agreed further surgery was too dangerous, Mike was given the green light to start cannabis treatment.
Mike Ruffin has suffered from intense back and neck pain for over 50 years.
He was prescribed a 50 millilitre bottle of cannabis oil consisting of a combination of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD).
“I took one does of [the] cannabis oil, and I slept that night for the first time in about three months,” he says. This was in 2019 and Mike, who continues to take cannabis oil daily, says he hasn’t experienced any pain from his injury since.
“The pain was harder on my wife than it was on me,” he says. “I’d wake up and she would be crying because of the noise I’d make trying to sleep. The change has been wonderful for both of us really.”
Now almost two years on, Mike, who takes 0.07 millilitres of cannabis oil per day, is living the active retirement he always dreamed he would. “I go to the gym three times a week … I’m walking around, I’ve got five grandchildren and I go to all their sports. I live a pretty normal life,” he says.
While CBD does come with a risk of side effects, including fatigue, nausea and vertigo, Mike hasn’t experienced any.
He’s now encouraging others suffering from chronic pain to speak to a health professional about using the oil as part of their treatment plan, saying: “I would say give it a go, you’ve got nothing to lose and the world to gain.”
What is medicinal cannabis?
Put simply, medicinal cannabis is made from the cannabis sativa plant. According to Dr Vickery, the cannabis plant contains hundreds of compounds, however there are only two major compounds (so far) that health experts believe have any real medical benefit: THC, the one that gets people high if you take it in large enough quantities, and CBD.
“Medicinal cannabis is a highly-refined pharmaceutical grade product that has known quantities of THC and CBD together,” he tells Starts at 60, adding that both compounds can also be prescribed separately.
Article by Penelope Pelecas on 26 February 2021 – startsat60.com
