Compassion for Rare Disease Pain Management

As many of you know, I have a rare disease known as Medullary Sponge Kidney (MSK). This is a sort of deformity of the kidney which is very conducive to forming kidney stones. There will never be a time that I don't have multiple stones in both kidneys as a result.

What you may not know is that doctors believe only obstructing kidney stones cause pain. This is not true. Any kidney stone patient support group is full of patients sharing their personal experiences of this. A simple Google search can also provide papers written about this. Also, doctors are reluctant to provide pain medicine in general because of the perceived risk of addiction if they do so. This unfortunately leaves patients like me with no adequate pain relief, despite two decades of documented use without any addiction issues.

I have recently relocated to Florida where medical marijuana is now legal. And I have decided that I would like to see if I qualify for this in order to help me manage my pain. I did not decide this lightly, but my quality of life is currently such that I feel I have little choice.

One problem is that I am currently without insurance. I am working on that, but I don't think I can wait until I get approved for something. So I created this fundraiser to see if anyone might be interested in helping me out.

I have learned that there are special doctors for determining if medical marijuana would be beneficial for an individual. I would have to see one, and if approved, would need to pay the state fee to register my card as active before I can try anything. This is estimated to cost approximately $300, which I do not currently have.

It's ok if you don't contribute. I know there are plenty of bigger, more important issues out there right now. But I would be overwhelmed with gratitude towards anyone who did feel moved to contribute. If I don't raise enough, or find an alternate solution that I could pay for, all funds will be refunded in full. Thank you for your consideration.