{"id":5814,"date":"2016-04-05T21:00:14","date_gmt":"2016-04-05T21:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marijuana.com\/?p=48845"},"modified":"2016-04-05T21:00:14","modified_gmt":"2016-04-05T21:00:14","slug":"the-literal-beating-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/the-literal-beating-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"The Literal Beating Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0 5px 5px;float:right;height:100px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/the-literal-beating-heart\/\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div><p>I\u2019m leaning over Sophie as she shakes in her bed. It\u2019s about 3:00 in the morning. I\u2019m loathe to turn on the light, but I do, and I lean over her and say the same words that I\u2019ve said, over and over and over, for the last twenty-one years. <em>It\u2019s okay. It\u2019s okay. It\u2019s okay. <\/em>When the seizure is over, I lift her gently over one arm where she slumps against me, and with the other arm plump the pillows and then lay her back down. I pull the blankets over her and then turn, sitting on the bed facing away. I am at once terribly present and necessarily dissociated. It never gets easier.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Sophie appears, right now, to be saturated with cannabis. When this happens, we stop giving it to her for a few days, fiddle with the dosage, sometimes change the strain and then re-start, hoping again for seizure control. It works, generally, and the rough time passes, she sleeps through the night, goes one week, even two, seizure-free, and then might have a bad day or two but recovers quickly. In the middle of the night, it\u2019s difficult to remember these things. I have a tendency to get dramatic, have existential thoughts, \u00a0Sartre&#8217;s\u00a0<em>la nausee. <\/em>I am resilient, but I have my limits.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>When the sun rises, I will start calling my comrades or private messaging them on Facebook. I\u2019ll make the rounds of the groups that discuss the vagaries of cannabis medicine and seizure control. I will wonder whether it\u2019s time to try THCa again or increase the dosage of THC. I will text an expert mother in San Diego, and she will text back. <em>I know a mom who\u2019s been using THC-only now, and it\u2019s working. <\/em>Another will tell me that a strain has stopped the seizures of her adult daughter for a month. I will consult with the cannabis doctor, and she will remind me that Sophie did better on a smaller amount of CBD. We will reduce the dosage as our next plan.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I remind myself that we are pioneers, here. Politicians might be duking it out, state by state, begged and cajoled by lobbyists and advocates, and the stoners stand in front of the White House with phallic doobies, blowing smoke at\u00a0the President to de-schedule marijuana. Fat cats of all persuasions sit in offices counting up the money, and state coffers bulge in anticipation of dollars. You can almost hear the sound of the pharmaceutical companies, racehorses snorting behind gates, waiting for the shotgun start. <em>The industry is exploding, <\/em>I either read or am told by someone or another, nearly every day. A few generations of men of color languish in jail for marijuana drug infractions. The irony is not lost on me. I pay an exorbitant amount of money for a dark brown bottle of green-tinted oil that I shake vigorously, draw up in a syringe and shoot into my daughter\u2019s mouth, only because I live in California. I can\u2019t afford the oil, but I\u2019ll figure it out. I, and perhaps thousands of other mothers and fathers, are sitting on the sides of our daughters\u2019 and sons\u2019 beds, trying to figure it all out. I\u2019m not sure everyone knows that we are the heart of the movement, the literal beating heart, that we are resilient, but that we have our limits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m leaning over Sophie as she shakes in her bed. It\u2019s about 3:00 in the morning. I\u2019m loathe to turn on the light, but I do, and I lean over her and say the same words that I\u2019ve said, over and over and over, for the last twenty-one years. It\u2019s okay. It\u2019s okay. It\u2019s okay. [&#8230;] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1521,5425,5426,5300,9,2451,2418,5427,1,3],"tags":[4089,5428,5429,5306,2454,2420,5430],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}