Before Cannabis: Addelyn was born with a significant brain malformation that causes her to have seizures that are very difficult to control. When Addy’s seizures started at 5 months of age, we fought them with an army of traditional antiepileptic medications legally prescribed by her epileptologist. It was then we learned the dangers of these medications. Overly medicated, Addelyn basically stopped living. She slept 22 out of 24 hours each day, suffered significant developmental regression, and stopped interacting with the world around her, including her loved ones. We carried her...

Hi! This is Mary, and Its been almost two years since I participated in Evolve the storytelling project presented by Realm of Caring Foundation, and I wanted to update everyone on how well I'm still doing almost two years later! For starters I'll be celebrating my 59th birthday in a couple of months, and I'm holding steady! Better then steady actually! I'm sure most of my doctors thought all my canna meds (CW, THCA & THC) was going to be a placebo effect. Still they couldn't deny the decrease in...

Our little boy who we call Baby Luke, is 4.5 years old, and the apple of our eye. He was born what we believed to be a happy handsome little boy and as parents do we loved him unconditionally. After a few months we noticed that there were issues in Baby Luke's development, so we brought him to the doctors. Approximately 2 years later, baby Luke was diagnosed with Profound Non-Verbal Autism, massive sight issues and a vestibular condition. We were heartbroken as we knew too well what this meant...

My name is Leigh. My first personal experience with cancer was in 1995 when my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer and given 6 months to live. Her name was Charlotte and she was a visionary. She lived for 6 years instead of 6 months and when I was first diagnosed in 2012 with Stage 1 breast cancer I remembered her words…”I wish I had never done that chemo or the radiation.” I chose to have bilateral mastectomies after determining I was BRCA positive. I declined the pharmaceutical...

As a parent of a child, receiving a “life-limiting” diagnosis is devastating. After months of hundreds of infantile spasms per day, we knew we had to try something different, something doctors were not initially on board with, especially with Melody being only nine months old. The two front-line medications did not stop her spasms, so we took a leap of faith and followed our gut instincts, bought a bottle of Charlotte's Web CBD extract and, with the help from the Realm of Caring we figured out her dose based on...

I was a Loadmaster on a MC-130P Combat Shadow during the Tsunami Relief Effort in 2004/2005, seeing mass devastation, and unworldly damage. My world was changed just a few months later when I sustained a dislocated and fractured right leg, and Traumatic Brain Injury. I went through the VA gambit, twice tasting the working end of loaded firearm before I finally decided to quit all medications until I found a better alternative. Sleeping medications, anti-depressants, anti-this and anti-that; I knew I couldn't continue that pace for long. After speaking with...

Our four-year-old son, Ayden, was born fourteen weeks premature suffering a grade four intraventricular hemorrhage. Along with this brain bleed, he suffered a myriad of issues, which compounded the severity of injury. Shortly after Ayden's first birthday we started noticing abnormal eye, arm, and leg movements. Given the circumstance, we knew he would have developmental delay. However, we soon learned that these abnormal movements were in fact catastrophic seizures further regressing his development. It was at the age of 18 months that he was diagnosed with both spastic quadriplegic cerebral...