Shannon’s Battle: Treating CRPS With Medical Cannabis

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One of the most painful diagnostics known to mankind has been tamed by the Cannabis plant:

Shannon Snelling is a 38-year-old otherwise healthy female from Colorado. She was diagnosed in 2015 with CRPS (Complex regional pain syndrome) following a routine bunionectomy (surgery to remove bunions) and navicular repair on her foot. What was supposed to be a simple surgery to change her life for the better has literally left her nearly crippled and riddled with intense and excruciating pain that’s so bad all pharmaceutical pain medication would do is make her sick. Rarely did she have much relief from what Big Pharma and her doctors had to offer – until she learned the right way to utilize medicinal cannabis. The key symptom with CRPS is prolonged and severe pain that is almost always constant and is described as a “burning” or “pins and needles” sensation, or as if someone were squeezing the affected limb. The pain may spread to the entire arm or leg, even though the injury might have only involved a finger or toe. In rare cases, pain can sometimes even travel to the opposite extremity. There is often increased sensitivity in the affected area, known as allodynia, in which normal contact with the skin is experienced as very painful. People with CRPS do not have an underlying diagnosis that can account for this pain, it’s somewhat of a medical phenomenon but for those who suffer from this it’s far from anything others could imagine. All around the world people like Shannon are turning to medicinal cannabis for health issues that otherwise would call for extremely addictive and dangerous pharmaceuticals – the type that people are overdosing and dying from as this article is being written. For Shannon making the choice to go to cannabinoid medicine wasn’t a difficult one as the prescription drugs were making her so sick and causing countless issues on top of what’s already considered the most painful diagnostic there is secondary to pancreatic cancer. Let’s take a look at what her foot ended up looking like after the surgery:

Although there’s a full interview on Shannon you’re about to read, the need to know how she was initially injured or gained trauma to the foot that’s caused this nightmare for her drove my curiosity batty, so I asked, “I fell in high school playing basketball and didn’t know I had fractured it, then I played the entire season on a broken foot and needless to say my career shooting hoops was over as I fractured it again a little worse last game of the season which really caused problems. Back then in 1996/97 doctors told me that if they messed surgery up I would never walk again so I didn’t have it done because the tendon had attached itself to a broken little piece of bone. Jump forward to 2015 with advancements in medicine, my doctor said he would have me running in 6 months to a year so I decided to have the surgery done. The surgeon said he could have cut the nerves but there’s no way he cut so many to cause this.” She shared with me how she never expected to do anything other than to end up jogging, walking, and enjoying life again after the surgery – but what happened is beyond shocking. What seemed like a routine quick operation to make life easier on her and stop pain ended up creating a life of continually searching for ways to stop such intense pain that at one point it would bring her to the point of considering whether life was even worth living that way. Her husband has stood by her side and fought the battle with her through thick and thin – now let’s hear what Shannon has to say:

How did you find out about medicinal cannabis or CBD?

“It was just sort of already known from living in Colorado. I wish I could say I never partook prior to my condition, but I did. It helped with my anxiety but I didn’t need a card to treat myself.”

What are you treating, can you tell me how the health issue affects you?

“CRPS aka Complex Regional Pain Syndrome which is known as the suicide disease because it’s one of the most painful diseases known to the medical community. Imagine feeling like your extremities are placed in buckets of dry ice and then set on fire with a blow torch, all day every day. The wind blowing across your skin feels like it’s being ripped off. Swelling, redness, purple mottling, and extreme pain were some of the qualifications of diagnosis. I have a spinal cord stimulator implanted to help with the swelling and color changes. However, that causes some pain in my back.”

How do you use cannabinoid medicine - what types and any dosing information that you’d like to share:

“I vape, ingest or smoke it. Whatever happens to be on sale that week or whatever my membership at the dispensary will help cover the cost. When I can I’ll make a topical solution made with cannabis to put on my foot. I use any and all cannabinoids I can get as even though access is high in Colorado affording it is a different story.”

What type of reaction do you get from friends, family, coworkers? Have you had any interesting experiences in relation to that?

“I don’t have coworkers due to my illness, I’m unable to work, but when I first began the journey I did and there was no problem. I was open and honest that I would be unable to pass a urinalysis due to prescribed medicinal cannabis. They all treated me normal and would help with things that were harder for me. I don’t have many friends either, but the ones I have understand and know the extent of CRPS and are completely supportive. In fact one of my friends got me a bong as a housewarming present because I could only use edibles or dabs in the apartment we were in – I had to keep the smell down or risk eviction. My mother has stage 4 cancer and one thing she’s going through is neuropathy which is very similar to what I have. She’s extremely supportive in my using cannabis as medicine.”

Did you take pharmaceutical medications – if so, has cannabis decreased this?

“I have a morphine allergy which was not fun finding out about. In the past I’ve been on Fentanyl therapy using patches combined with Oxycodone which required Zofran to counteract the extreme nausea. I refuse opiates now. I had an ER visit a couple weeks back for pain. I was excited as I told my husband the ER was “opiate free”, so excited I told him “Yay, it’s safe. It wasn’t in the least bit safe. I told them NO OPIATES since I don’t handle them well. The hospital instead gave me a synthetic opiate unknown to me called Nubain, and Zofran with it because I told them pain medication makes me nauseous but I don’t usually throw up. My husband told me I began to vomit, sweat, and seemed out of it once they gave me that drug. I don’t remember anything nor can I remember anything about those 2 days. I don’t remember leaving the hospital, don’t remember picking kids up from school or throwing up the entire ride home. I don’t remember the next day. I couldn’t eat for almost a week without throwing up. I was too weak to even get out of bed.”

What else would you like to share about your journey?

“Without cannabis as medicine, I would probably be dead either from opiate/opioid overdose or suicide as the pain was so bad that even air hitting my foot felt like a saw was being taken to it. CRPS is a neurological disorder that causes the brain to interpret signals as pain even when nothing that would cause pain is present. Sort of autoimmune disease the body sort of attacks itself. CRPS causes joint degeneration, muscle wasting, and local bone loss in the affected limb. It spreads as well; mine started in my right foot. I now have pain all the way up past my right knee, my left foot to mid-shin, and both wrists and sometimes hands. There’s no cure, nor do they know what causes it.” (In the video below, Vincent Carlesi, MD, of Pain Management Associates of Connecticut in Stamford, an anesthesiologist who discusses his use of medical cannabis to treat CRPS)

What advice would you give to those considering trying out plant medicine like this, but waiting to get more information?

“You have to try things out to see what’s going to work, try different strains and avenues to get it into your system, different delivery methods like inhaling, ingesting, topical and more. If one way doesn’t work… try another!”

How is your life now after you’ve discovered how to heal/treat yourself differently. Has your activity level increased?

“I’m no longer bed or couch-bound – I can get up and move around. While medicinal cannabis and extracts don’t take away all of my pain, my quality of life has definitely improved in a big way!”

What myth about Cannabis do you believe needs to be squashed?

“That it’s addictive – that’s such bologna! A week, just one week of opiates is all it takes to become reliant upon them – even addicted. I’ve done tolerance resets, and I don’t go through a single withdrawal symptom from medicinal cannabis.”

Although Shannon’s foot appears to be healed the discoloration continues and the pain it sends throughout her body is more than most could handle

If you could send a message, any message, to the world – what would it be?

“Be more tolerant, research, and understand before shaming someone for using something that’s better for the body just because some uneducated person tells you it’s bad.”

People with CRPS also experience changes in skin temperature, skin color, or swelling of the affected limb. This is due to abnormal microcirculation caused by damage to the nerves controlling blood flow and temperature. As a result, an affected arm or leg may feel warmer or cooler compared to the opposite limb. The skin on the affected limb may change color, becoming blotchy, blue, purple, pale, or red. Shannon has dealt with all of this and found relief through the amazing cannabis plant and the various terpenes and cannabinoids found within it. The constituents of cannabis, hemp, or whatever anyone wants to call what was once known as the Devil’s lettuce are so immense and so numerous even the world of cannabis experts can’t list them all. The number of nutrients, vitamins, healthy fats, and more that are within the plant allow for healing, unlike pharmaceuticals which mask symptoms vs. attacking the problem. There’s no known cure for CRPS or any treatment that’s reliable other than prescription after prescription – it’s patients like Shannon Snelling that give hope to others that are battling serious life-threatening health issues as well as insight into how plant-based alternative medicine can be the answer when it comes to treating very intense chronic recurring pain.

Many wonder how people end up with CRPS. It’s very unclear why some individuals develop this while others with similar trauma do not. In more than 90 percent of cases, the condition is triggered by a clear history of trauma or injury. The most common triggers are fractures, sprains/strains, soft tissue injury, limb immobilization (such as being in a cast), surgery, or even minor medical procedures such as needle stick. This is exactly what happened to Shannon – she went to gain help through a western medicine procedure that should have gone well but unfortunately, her body responded in a way that will likely require intensive cannabinoid medicine for the balance of her life in order to stay away from the pain medications that have made her so sick in the past. There’s hope in the plant and its efficacy – and as we see more patients speak out about how they’ve managed their health issues with it more doors are open to those that consider medicinal cannabis but haven’t made the move to it out of fear or prior teachings of how ‘bad’ it is – which we all know now was nothing more than lies to perpetuate prohibition against a plant and allow for a pharmaceutical, petroleum, textile, and other industry to prosper at the expense of the health of our world.