Who am I? I am a 41 year old woman with an ten-year-old daughter. I also have a husband and my mother lives with us. I am the primary breadwinner for the family, and lack of resources has been an ongoing and increasing theme... though we have persevered to date. However, I have been diagnosed with chronic abdominal pain of unknown origin. I have migraines, potential endometriosis, a dysfunction in gall bladder, and a pancreas that takes fits every so often that land me in the hospital.

I have missed a significant amount of work and my quality of life has negatively suffered. My work performance (once a great source of pride) suffered as well to some degree.

I am now being switched to medical Marijuana, which has very good success data but is expensive and not covered under my health plan. Furthermore, any additional time off that I take due to illnees or medical appointments will have to be unpaid time. As such, I am seeking your assistance.

My story started about eight years ago with the onset of pain in my left lower abdomen. The pain took up residence and has never left. I was having flare up episodes of pain, vomiting, and diahherea that would see me at the ER on numerous cases over the subsequent six years. My family doctor, Dr. Gowan, has been an abolute blessing in all this, allowing plenty of time to analyze and discuss my case. In years past, I had CT scans, MRIs, ultrasounds, scopes, enemas, and copious amounts of blood tests. They all showed there was absolutely nothing wrong with me. So, I thought then I'd have to live with the pain.

For my fortieth birthday, I had a weeklong celebration, doing movies and lunch with friends and dinner out with family. I had been feeling heavy and not myself all day on my birthday and that night I was taken by ambulance for severe, severe stomach pain. I remained in the hospital for 19 days and had many old and new tests - including a laproscopy - which again showed nothing "wrong", despite the pain I was in and the fact that I couldn't eat or pee.

In the first weeks of getting out of the hospital, it was determined that I was celiac. Great, I thought!! So I just stopped eating gluten and my pain should go away. It didn't. In fact, over the next eight months, I was proscribed an extremely high dose of long acting morphine. This brought my pain level down to a somewhat manageable level but I was still dealing with pain about a 7 or 8 (on the out of 10 pain scale) every day as well as all the terrible side effects of the morphine. This was negatively impacting my sleep, personality, home life, work life, and quality of life. Two weeks ago, I was admitted to the hospital again with pancreatic and gall bladder issues. Getting my gall bladder out is not a possibly right now (my specialist had accepted a job in the Netherlands!). So I belive now that I have to accept that I will be in some amount of pain every day and some days there will be more pain (or way more for pancreatitis episodes). But I still need something better to manage the pain.

I have now been approved to use medical Marijuana in an effort to reduce my daily pain and increase my quality of life. The big downside is cost as I currently have health care plus but this is not covered and won't be cheap. The basic per month out of pocket costs will be over $200-400 and there are start up costs for equipment is in the range of $100-500.

As well, due to abundant issues and medical appointments, I have exhausted all my leave. I go to work sick now because if I don't I'll lose a day's pay, which would have a major impact in our family as I am the major breadwinner. This is true as well for the many medical and specialist appointments and procedures coming up (including the fact that recent financial setbacks have resulted in us having services turned off). I am extremely concerned that having to take sick days off for illness and appointments could drive us further in the hole financially.

I have set my goal at $3000 as I belive that will set me up for success in the first six months. After that, I hope to understand exactly what I need and the associated cost so I can budget for it. 

Thank you all for reading my story. I appreciate your thoughts as well as anything you could part with to help the cause.