Pain is ever present and her brother despair is always lurking.

I was overtaken yesterday despite some buoyancy post Burning Man.  I feel the decompression and already miss my campmates enthusiasm and the joy of life that flows there from the vast vistas of nature and the captivating art and the human care and wild creativity and personal adornment.  The permission-- like oxygen.
It is all here I know I just have to go and get it.
I had left my diclofenac and loperamide creams up north.  I had used a lot of loperamide the last days for tear down and exodus and the inflammatory side effects have hit me through the week.  But is is more the loss of momentum...if the morning gets away from me I am easily overtaken and the day is lost.  Another day lost.

But not yet today...

I need hugs and movement to distract. 
This writing a bit is something.

Maybe to water the garden.

I realize I continue to do a lot of drug therapy consulting.
Each week at the Elks Lodge. 
And friends of friends aware of my alternate cancer treatment call to discuss my experience and options available. 
Chit chatting about pain when I open up about it-- I've used some clever innovation.

I have not been getting out much but when I do people still want to talk medication-- for clarification, options, advice regarding how to talk to their medical doctors.

At first I thought they were just being nice or making conversation.  But people want help. 
It is nice that ten years of school and twenty years of pharmacy work is valued.
But how does one receive renumeration without selling a product?

I physically can't move product and wield phones in the trenches anymore.  I'm encouraged...but I don't yet see a way.

So I am still pondering how to move forward and specifically regarding CBD.

Three years I have been in debilitating pain wandering in despair.  The only break was during cancer treatment.

I used cannabis successfully to treat a tumor and experienced pain relief for 3 months.  My plan was to get better and get back to pharmacy work part time.

But my physical pain rebounded as did the melancholy.  The dilemma is that cannabis is still schedule one-- federally designated as a narcotic with no medical benefit--and I would not be able to work as pharmacist as employers generally drug test at hiring, promotions and for cause. So I have fought to be pain free naturally using neuroplastic reprogramming techniques, anti inflammatory diet, a lot of heat, physical/massage therapy when I think can afford it, and occasional opiate use.

I don't want to be dopey but the pain I am in already prevents me from doing calculations or being social for any length of time.  I can put on a mask of composure for a conversation, maybe an hour or even an afternoon occasionally but I am not ready for prime time.

I have to try something else.

The question is... is it time to just let pharmacy go and live whatever life I can.
Can I be done with this arm, neck , back pain and malaise?

Can I throw off cultural conditioning to the dipoles of rabid ambition chasing achievement and intermittent debilitation to find some middle ground where I might enjoy the time I have left on Earth.  Will I lose mental capacity and short term memory to dopiness?...have I lost it already to years of pain, isolation and depression?

Is CBD worth throwing out the past livelihood in hopes of some new future?

Progress.

I am up.  I am out of bed.
Over the last three years I have had days at a time where I am locked in pain wallowing in darkness.
So by that measure today is good.

Three years ago I could not lift my laptop without shooting pain up my left arm deep to my neck.
Now, last night I slept prone with my head turned...the neck is freer.
But still with a heating pad on it, it still aches.  And arms and shoulders.

I looked over some doctor notes and none of them actually describe what is going on in my body...are they even listening?  I'll have to write it down myself.  Healing is likely always done by the self.
But I would like a doc who can listen and help me solve these puzzles of pain, malaise and despair.

But I am up.
And typing.
And I slept well.

Life is good.

I spent some time with an old friend and he relayed the story of coaching his girlfriend 's teenage son about reading "big" books.

The boy said he couldn't possibly read the large tomes assigned in school.

My friend explained how he could break it down, a little at a time and of coarse he could read a large book.

The best books are "big" and if you can read you can read a big book.

I was hearing this.. as I have not read a book in over three years.

I have been in pain for a decade but at a level these last years where I cannot concentrate more than a few minutes.

I had given up.  Reading only Twitter and short Face Book posts for news and inspiration.  No books. No more Harper's, Economist, medical texts, nothing save the occasional poem.
Thank goodness for the forwarded Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, Rumi and Garrison Keillor's anthology of good poems or my brain would have dried up completely.  Even an only weekly life support poem.

But I heard my friend.  I am going to read a book.  Even if I have to take a lot of drugs to do it.

While you were in the lab inhaling chemicals the culture of medicine changed and your work is not so relevant anymore.  I imagine that is the fear driving the banshee cries for credentials when solid queries from the layman arise about the nature of healing and the resources allocated for it.
Where the relationships happen, where decisions are made, where people get hurt or get healed, is in the prescribers office and the pharmacy counter and with family....not so much in the lab.
Knuckle dragging chest thumping scientists who refuse to use their minds instead to defend burning towers and crumbling institutions--so last century.

Following an intuition to go to my alma mater UCSF School of Pharmacy for career guidance I e-mailed four professors.
My body is broken to a degree preventing me from performing the tasks I have for 17 years as a pharmacist: repetitive lifting above the chest, opening bottles, cradling phones and writing, looking up and down all day.  I am looking for a new way to make a living.
I contacted professors with similar interests to mine: all keep a hand in academics and writing, diabetes, psychopharmacology and supplements and integrative medicine.
Two did not respond.
One very graciously explained that I am too old to do residency and academics and should consider government regulatory or sales jobs.
One is recently deceased in Las Vegas apparently having left the university attempting to open an internet pharmacy.
But there may be some volunteer mentoring opportunities.
And I would genuinely like to do that.