My name is May and I’m 41 years old. I’ve been sick all my life due to severe PTSD and fought hard to keep my head above water. I suffered from severe depression, anxiety, confusion, body pain, etc. on and off my entire life. I’ve tried just about everything, from various methods of therapy, antidepressants, antipsychotics to anxiolytics that were on the market at the time. I’ve also been in psychiatric care where they also didn’t know what to do in order to help me. I have tried exercise, mindfulness, and various herbal remedies and nothing has worked. I changed my whole lifestyle, tried different diets, yoga and meditation every day and while it helped a lot, it was not enough as I would still be very ill at regular intervals.
About 10 months ago, my body succumbed to the enormous pressure of living for so long with such vicious scars on my body and soul. Over time, my body ached more and more.
At the same time, I started getting seizures where I suddenly couldn’t speak, became paralyzed and fainted, and had small tremors. I went in and out of hospitals and various examinations where they suspected everything from blood clots in the brain, beginning MS to epilepsy.
My diagnosis: PNES
After 8 months of anxious uncertainty, I was finally diagnosed with PNES, psychogenic nonepileptic seizure. It can look a lot like epilepsy but PNES is due to an extreme stress load which, in my case, is associated with PTSD. Until about 14 days ago, my body pain had become so bad that I was bedridden most days. I could not be alone because several times was choking due to my tongue blocking airways during seizures. The worse the body pain became, the more seizures would occur. It was a living hell. I didn’t have the strength to live in the end, only survive. I had between 5 and 18 seizures a day and I had to almost be dragged by my boyfriend if I was going to the toilet. I was in so much pain that I couldn’t bear to wear clothes, be touched, speak, or read. Normal sounds and noises would irritate me and walking felt like walking with broken legs, I was so exhausted that I could fall asleep in the middle of conversations I was trying to have, and the intense pains would throw my body back into seizures. Occasionally I had some days where I managed to slow down my pain temporarily and I tried to come out and walk with our dogs, or go out shopping, I tried to be optimistic and to stay strong, but it always punished me afterwards.
Despite the fact that the doctor had put me on morphine, it just got worse until at last, I was so depressed and upset that I began to sincerely consider whether this really was a life I wanted to fight for.
I tried CBD oil and this is what happened:
I had once tried some CBD oil and it had a good effect on my depression and anxiety. I desperately grabbed for Nordic Oil’s CBD oil which I had read really positive reviews about on the web. I had absolutely NO expectation that it would in any way help in anything other than the depression and the anxiety and I thought it might keep me alive long enough for me to have the body pain diagnosed. I was optimistic as my newly acquired puppy was trained to stay as my service dog and there might be a solution in the future.
A miracle happened… and I’m crying for relief and gratitude while writing this here …
After a week on your 500mg CBD oil my pain was so minimized that I could go out for a swim, wear clothes, even go to the toilet.
Once again, I was able to go out for walks with my dog and with my boyfriend. Now I have been on the oil for 14 days and up to 6 drops a day. Thanks to this CBD oil I can sit here and write this to you. I can cook again. Read books, play with my puppy, receive and hug, hear music, dance in the rain. I can finally live a little again.
I’m not saying I’m cured at all. I still suffer with pain especially in the evening, it is just not at the same intense level as before and I am not completely fatigued 24/7. I still get seizures in between here and there. In the 14 days I have been on CBD oil, I have only had 15 seizures. Where I the other months had 94 in 14 days.
My world may still be small compared to most other’s… but I appreciate that I can enjoy my life in small flashes now. I do not understand at all how it can help so much when nothing else could, but I am just SO grateful. I sincerely hope that the CBD together with the trauma treatment I attend, and as well as my service dog in training, will allow me to get completely off of morphine and maybe even one day can have expand my little world a bit more. I look forward to seeing people again and maybe find a way to help others with the experiences I have.
I have no idea what the future will bring, but I have hope. Hope that my story can be used for something positive in this world. I hope I can do more than lie in my bed and be sick, even if it’s just to go out and look at the crows in the meadow or gain the courage to go to the supermarket to meet my boyfriend with my puppy. Something would not have dared to do for a year.
So, THANKS is really just a poor and insufficient word.
I feel like I’ve become a human being again.
Not just a shadow of the one I once was.
Yours sincerely,
May
