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My name is Victoria Zavala. I live in the city of Lancaster California. I am 36 years old and have a 4-year-old daughter. I suffer from systemic Lupus and degenerative disc disease. I think I have had it for a long time but I was diagnosed in 2006 a year after my daughter was born.
I went through a lot of treatments and therapies, and a lot of pills. And I started to realize that they were not working. I started using Hemp and Omega products, hemp seeds, oatmeal, and hemp milk and it began to help me–before I got pregnant in 2005.
I had a back injury in 2002 and was taking a lot of medication for my back injury. I gained a lot of weight. I took a lot of prednisone and steroids. So, unfortunately, it got me big, I weighed 325 pounds. I decided to get gastric bypass surgery.
After the bypass surgery, things were working out well. 18 months later I got pregnant–something I had not been able to do before due to a lot of infertility problems. I had little medical issues before getting pregnant.
After the bypass surgery and having my daughter, I had to look for alternative pain treatment. 3 months after I had my daughter, I couldn’t breastfeed anymore. I became extremely sick. I couldn’t find out what was wrong, even though I had all kinds of blood tests.
They thought I had Celiac Disease, so I had to do a different diet. Then they thought I had Wilson’s disease, so I had to watch all kinds of blood work and different medications. Then they thought I had a bleeding ulcer.
It continued with all kinds of pills, but the pills weren’t working and I couldn’t work. I was very disabled–it was difficult. I eventually started feeling a little better, so I went back to work in the medical field as a first responder (since I had experience as a nurse).
I soon realized that I couldn’t keep up my duties physically. I couldn’t lift a patient’s leg to do an irritation. Most smells made me sick. I would get cold in the office, my fingers would cramp up and hurt, sitting down at the desk for long periods, standing up, doing vitals, and pushing the blood pressure cuff.
There were days I would come home and couldn’t play with my daughter. I would have a headache, I couldn’t eat, and I would throw up a lot. But every day I would go to work. And I started realizing maybe the clinical was too much for me. So I started working on customer service, and data entry but that didn’t work either. I was having a hard time.
One day, my mother asked me what I was using before my daughter was born, and what I was using because it was working. I finally admitted to her that I had been using cannabis before. That I had smoked marijuana and my pain was going away–I felt better. She encouraged me to try it again.
But I didn’t know quite what was wrong with me. So when I got diagnosed in the summer of 2006. I knew that I was on my way to treatment and therapy. Time went on and I started getting treatment and the treatment almost killed me. I still feel pain in one of my arms from receiving those treatments that put poisons into my system that were supposed to get me better.
Going into anaphylactic shock during my last treatment was the biggest scare of my life. As a former first responder, I knew what was happening to me. I knew that my body wasn’t handling it anymore, that my body was rejecting it.
That was the day I said, “I can’t do this to myself, I gotta find my own way.” And it took me a week or two, and I followed up with a doctor. They checked my hemoglobin. My levels went up a little bit higher, but not too much.
So I told him that I was going back to using cannabis because this was what was working for me historically. He was an oncologist and a hematologist and said go ahead. So I did, and I said I’ll see you.
It took me about a month to detox my body before I tried the cannabis. I had to use the hemp products. I had to get off the Fentonol patches, Oxycontin, Morphine, Soma, Ultram, steroids, and beta-blockers. Anyone who knows about lupus knows the pills I’m talking about–the steroids, the swelling that happens, how the sun aches, the feeling of your veins, the cramping, what your stomach endures from taking all of those pills. You find yourself taking that pill to cure that problem, and you find that the pill has a problem.
Pill after pill, patch after patch. You have to cleanse your body. You have to get your mind back. It’s more than just your body, your wellness, your health. It’s your mind, your spirit, your will to live.
Medical Cannabis News - Medical Marijuana 411.com - Sponsored Content
Patient Story – Victoria Zavala with Systemic Lupus and Degenerative Disc Disease
https://thcgeeks.com/2024/11/patient-story-victoria-zavala-with-systemic-lupus-and-degenerative-disc-disease/
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