By Laura Michell
Alice Davy has lived with chronic, life-limiting pain for most of her life.
The Eynesbury mum-of-two was diagnosed with endometriosis 12 years ago and in that time has had “countless” operations and organ removal procedures.
Three years ago following the birth of her second son, she was diagnosed with Multiple sclerosis (MS).
However like her battle with endometriosis, Alice’s journey to diagnosis wasn’t straight forward.
The new mum’s condition was initially written off as postpartum psychosis because her MS symptoms began five or six weeks after her son was born.
“The symptoms would start on the first day of my period,” Alice said.
“In the end it turned out I had 100 symptoms of MS.
“I know it wasn’t mental health – I could recall everything that happened.”
Alice’s symptoms included vertigo, foot drop, tremors, rapid eye movement, urinary issues, cognitive issues which prevented her from communicating clearly and sleep deprivation.
“The longest I went was three and half days without being able to sleep. I had a nine-year-old and a baby but it wasn’t them keeping me awake,” she said.
Doctors also suggested that Alice’s symptoms were the result of her overusing medicinal cannabis.
Alice began using medicinal cannabis about a year and half earlier to treat the chronic and debilitating endometriosis pain.
Eventually, she was diagnosed with MS.
Alice said life has been rough since her MS diagnosis, but she believes it would have been even worse if she wasn’t already taking medicinal cannabis.
The suggestion to try medicinal cannabis came from a friend who was battling cancer.
Alice said that while she was aware of the drug’s pain-relief benefits, she was also skeptical about taking it.
“I smoked twice when I was younger and it was a horrible feeling … but I also knew how beneficial medicinal cannabis was. I was a bit skeptical because I didn’t want to feel like that,” she said.
“Within six months my life started to change.
“I know now that medicinal cannabis doesn’t have the same effect as [cannabis did] when I was younger.”
Prior to taking medicinal cannabis, Alice was maxed out on opioids to manage her pain and antiemetics to subdue the nausea.
Her pain was so severe that she also had a spinal cord stimulator implanted in her spine. This required surgeons to cut her back open in two places and sow a TENS machine into her spine.
“I look back and think, ‘how did I not die with all the drugs I was on?’” Alice said.
“My life before, even though I worked two or three jobs to support my then only child, I was in severe pain all day.
“If I went out anywhere, I was in bed for three days. I was parenting from bed.
“I couldn’t plan in advance because I didn’t know when I would have [an endometriosis] flare up.”
Alice said she uses medicinal cannabis safely and feels less impaired on it than she did on opioids.
And while she still needs to take pharmaceuticals from time to time, she said medicinal cannabis has given her back her life.
She boxes regularly and is training to complete a half marathon – something that would have been impossible to do before.
“Life is very different now.
“I do still have pain but not as much
“I can only imagine this is how life would have been for the last 15 years if my endo was treated the way it needed to be.
“I lost my entire reproductive system, had a bowel resection and lost part of my bladder.
“It is wild how this disease has affected my body.
“I can’t go back to my life before [medicinal cannabis]. I don’t have a choice.”
