This article was originally published on the Marijuana Patients Organization site on February 1, 2011.
Syringomyelia is a condition that causes a fluid filled space to grow inside of your spinal cord causing widespread pain and sometimes paralysis. My condition was caused by diving into a pond when I was in my twenties. It took twenty years for this to grow and it was expanding through my spinal cord. I had spinal cord surgery in 2010 to collapse the syrinx and place a shunt in my spinal cord. I still have pain from this and being fused from c-4 through t-1 in my neck. I’m also fused at t-10 through t-12. I also have other disk herniations throughout my spine. Opiate drugs cause vomiting and drugged feeling where I find it impossible to function.
Marihuana has given me the ability to live my daily life fairly normally.
Susan D.