PUNTA GORDA, Fla. — Nikki Chouinard has been living with Multiple Sclerosis for two decades. She said it’s caused pain in her hands, knees and back. She worked as a dental hygienist for 25 years, and said MS cost her her job.
“I’d get home and I’d be mentally exhausted and physically exhausted because I had tremors in my hands and I didn’t have medicine for that yet,” she said.
MS causes the body’s autoimmune system to attack it’s immune system, which affects your nervous system.
She said her condition got really bad when she had an episode two years after her diagnosis. It had taken over her whole body. She said she was hospitalized and then sent to a nursing home for weeks.
“I had blood transfusions…and God knows what they put in me. And I really don’t remember most of it. I could not walk. I had to learn how to walk,” she said.
And since then she’s been using several different medicines prescribed by her doctor. Typical according to Dr. Gene Mahaney with pain management consultants.
“We treat the pain in a similar way we treat any other pain. With opioids, pain medications, neuropath pain medications and injections to keep pain under control,” he said.
But even with the traditional medicine Chouinard says she still felt symptoms of her MS. So she started taking CBD in addition to her medication. And she said she’s seen a big difference.
“The tingling in my fingers has subsided tremendously. I can do daily things and I’m not dropping things as much,” she said.
She said since she started using it a few weeks ago, it’s helped with her back and knee pain, too. And she said now she can walk without her cane sometimes.
Your CBD Store owner Jim Harrington said what she uses relaxes her body, but doesn’t have THC…the ingredient in marijuana that causes users to feel high. He said he’s proud to be in a business where he can help people like Chouinard.
“We see people coming back after they’ve tried it and they tell us their success stories. It’s absolutely amazing. We love it,” he said.
The Farm bill passed at the beginning of 2019 making it legal to cultivate and sell hemp, the plant Harrington uses for his CBD. The FDA is still working on CBD regulations, which they say could change within the next year or two.
