My Mom the DARE Instructor and her Medical Marijuana Card

 
Thanks XP! There have been a few blades that have helped along the way that don't know it yet. I'm hoping they will figure it out  
 

 
I've had quite a few people ask me questions and I thought the best way to answer would be to write it down. Glad you're here TD  
 

 
Thanks Compost! 
 

 
Thanks Stickey!
 

 
Well if you've studied CJD then you know how this story must end. Hospice does a great job and I will forever be thankful for the help they provided for my Mom. As tough as some of the things were that I went through in the last 3 weeks, I will always be thankful that it was me that was there for her for that and not some stranger. By all means if you have any questions about the disease I am more than willing to answer what I experienced with it. Thanks for subbin in  
 

 
Thanks Apex! Truer words couldn't be spoken about losing your mental abilities. 
 

 
It definitely does some amazing things. We're working on my Dad to take it daily right now   Glad you could make it Kronicly !

 

 
Thanks Seed! The hardest part of this journey has been watching what this does to my Dad. My parents met when they were juniors in high school and have been together their whole lives.
 

 
Thanks Mrs Ironhead!!
 
RSO is some amazing stuff!! Glad you both are here for this journey!!  
 

 
Ok so let me look back at my notes and see where we are and I will continue this story.  

 

I can still remember the video conference call I had with my friends the night I told them I had convinced my Dad to let me put my Mom on Medical Marijuana. They knew my Mom's back story and their eyes were all as big as saucers. Once they picked their chins up off the floor we immediately started discussing our plans for getting my Mom medicine. That fact that I lived in Connecticut 2500 miles away from my Mom in California was not going to slow this process down.
 
Fortunately for me I have some good friends all across the country and they were all willing to help. They may not all have had a direct part in my Mom getting her medicine, but they all played a vital role in a time when I needed them most. (The friend's wife who checked in on my wife every day when I was gone giving her moral support did not go unnoticed either. Thanks Mrs J   )
 
As fortune would have it, my friend in CA had just happened to come across a strain called Harlequin (a very high CBD strain) and he was going to convert it into a tincture  Once the tincture was ready he would send it to my Dad who would then administer it to my Mom. The timing of this find was crucial. Trying to find a high CBD strain ready to be converted to medicine this time of the year would have been extremely difficult from CT. I hope the person who gave him the Harlequin reads this and knows how much I truly am thankful for your kind act.  
 
Now that my Mom's medicine was being made and I knew once she got back to CA she was only a few days away from getting her medicine, I was feeling pretty confident we were going to make a change but CJD had different plans. I always hoped that my Mom had been holding the disease back with her strong will to see the birth of her 6th grandchild but things took a major turn when Mom got back to CA, and even to this day I still wonder if the stress of that flight back across the country didn't trigger her disease to go faster. In either case this is the moment when CJD became ugly and started to show it's dark side.

 

When my parents returned to CA the agitation and anger side of the CJD started to rear it's ugly head. Simple things would send my Mom into fits of rage and tantrums like a 5 yr old. She got mad at something and then you had to be prepared for the chain of events that were to follow after.  
 
Mom misplaced some of her earrings and she was certain someone had put her nice jewelry in the safe for safekeeping. When she was shown that they weren't there this infuriated Mom and she proceeded to take her watch off, walked over to the toilet threw it in and flushed it. Dad proceeded to put all of her jewelry in the safe for safekeeping after this incident.
 
It was the fall season so the gardener for the house planted all new snap dragons and other fall flowers around the property. She apparently did not approve the next day and decided to take a shovel and go dig out everything he planted as well as the rose bushes in protest. 
 
One night at the dinner table Mom was getting frustrated because she was having a difficult time cutting her chicken. When my Dad got up and offered to give her a hand she threw her knife across the room in anger. That was the last night sharp objects were left in the house. Dad put them in a box and put them on the top shelf of the garage out of reach.
 
When Mom was diagnosed they took her car keys as a precaution which didn't bother my Mom at the time. When she got back from CT she was hell bent on driving. Dad was more than willing to drive her where ever she wanted to go whenever she wanted but of course this was not good enough. Mom's reaction? She decided to lock herself in her brand new car she just gotten in March and decided to cut the seat belts out of the car with a pair of scissors she had hidden somewhere.
 
The worst part of her when she was angry was the yelling. I don't think any of us were prepared for my Mom to be as mad as she was or for her to yell some of the things she was saying. I think my sister never having really experienced Mom yelling at her took this the worst. She called me up several times crying, I wish I would have been closer to help more during this time.

 

 
Thanks Gold! I was really close to my Mom and this story is going to get tougher as we go, I appreciate your support!
 

 
Luckily we are in the process of moving so I am keeping myself busy. The reality of the situation really hasn't settled in yet.
 

 
I will check. I know he is currently looking for a couple different strains for my Dad.

 

OK so here we are in the middle of October 2013 and we had just finished the next round of tests at UCSF and we were also about to find out which version of the disease Mom had. There are three major categories of CJD 

• In sporadic CJD, the disease appears even though the person has no known risk factors for the disease. This is by far the most common type of CJD and accounts for at least 85 percent of cases.
• In hereditary CJD, the person has a family history of the disease and/or tests positive for a genetic mutation associated with CJD. About 5 to 10 percent of cases of CJD in the United States are hereditary.
• In acquired CJD, the disease is transmitted by exposure to brain or nervous system tissue, usually through certain medical procedures. There is no evidence that CJD is contagious through casual contact with a CJD patient. Since CJD was first described in 1920, fewer than 1 percent of cases have been acquired CJD.

The Dr had not opened the envelope prior to sitting down with my Dad and sister, he had to make sure we were aware of what the results we were getting meant. The hereditary version of this disease was basically a death sentence, you just didn't know when it was coming. The Dr asked again to make sure we wanted to know the results after we assured him we understood what the test results would say and what each answer meant for us he then opened the envelope. Fortunately for our family Mom had the sporadic version and her 6 grandchildren were going to be safe from dealing with this disease.
\nThe current round of tests at UCSF showed very little physical changes in the progression of the disease. The motor skills tests they were putting her through didn't have the same positive results. Mom was now beginning to struggle with simple commands like asking her to touch her chin to her chest. She would touch her chin with her finger and say "chin," then touch her finger to her chest and say "chest." She had also started to have occasional muscle spasms in her arms and hands. When you approached her you had to make sure you weren't too loud as noise started to bother her. You had to also take precaution to not startle or surprise her, as she was very jumpy and got rather angry if you did.
\nWhen they had returned from their UCSF trip in October the package containing the Harlequin tincture had arrived. We weren't sure what to expect or how fast we would see results. We just knew the long list of pharmaceuticals my Mom was taking were not helping. 
\n

 

Now that my Dad had the tincture it was a matter of administering it to my Mom. He decided to put the drops of tincture on a cookie, brownie, cinnamon roll, or some other tasty treat and then just leave the treat out on the table.  They would have breakfast at 6:30 and Dad would just put the treat on the table with her cereal and the treat would usually be gone by 8. Dad noticed immediately the mornings she started eating the treats she would not be angry or frustrated and it was easier to communicate with her. The calming effect was good until the afternoon and then the anger would return. Dad started leaving her a treat with a couple drops for her after lunch and then her anger was gone for the day. The few days she decided to not eat the treats were the days her anger really lashed out.
 
By the end of October we had eliminated my Mom's anger but we were still dealing with several other issues. Mom was not sleeping much anymore and even though she was on a prescription of Ambien it was not keeping her sleeping through the night. A lack of sleep for Mom meant a lack of sleep for Dad. The long days and now the short nights were starting to take their toll on him. I talked with my friend in CA and he had another NorCal blade who had just harvested some Girl Scout Cookies, Blueberry Headband, and OG Kush and he was about to convert some into BHO for him. As soon as the BHO was ready he made a batch of brownies with it for my Mom and shipped them off to her. 
 
We tried to get a Hospice worker to come over once a day from 10am-2pm to give my Dad a break but Mom was not about to let some stranger in her house and refused all of them. We ended up convincing and hiring two of my Mom's friends to help out and they went above and beyond what we asked for. The biggest problem we were dealing with now was Mom's wanderings. She could not sit still for 15 minutes. At any given moment she would just jump up out of her seat and be headed off with complete determination to get wherever she was going. This was fine while it was inside the house, but then she started heading out the front door and the fear of her wandering off grew immensely.
 
Conversations with my Mom were definitely shorter now. You could still sit down and talk with her, but you had to lead the conversation now and you had to be prepared for her to change the subject at a moment's notice.