I don't have a "warm, feel-good" story. In fact, three years later, every time I tell it, I begin to cry. However, it is MY story, and I need to tell it, and you need to hear it.

My story begins at the start of 1999; I had just turned 27 years old. My husband and I had been married for seven years. Our son was five. We had moved out of our apartment, into a house with a yard. I had the perfect little family, a house I loved, and a job that I adored.

I had been working out with weights and doing aerobics for years, and had the body every girl dreams of. My life was perfect, albeit for a very short time.

In March, I slipped on spilled salad dressing at work, and hurt my arm. After a trip to the emergency room, a referral to a respected orthopedist, and a reassurance that it was only a minor, soft tissue injury, I had no reason to worry.

However, as the days wore on, my arm was hurting more and more, instead of getting better, it got worse.

A cast had been put on my arm because of this. It felt worse every day. One day, I awoke to the feeling that my arm was being crushed. (If the arm were swelling in the cast, it would cause that feeling, right?) I went to the doctors, and insisted that they immediately remove the cast. (My doctor seemed to treat people like numbers, so this was really going over well.) Underneath the cast, was an appendage the size of my son’s. It had black, 2-3"hairs all over. It was like a dead limb on a tree - dead, all except for the pain. The bones felt like they were being crushed in a vice. I had a fiery burning sensation underneath the skin, and electric shock-like pains were radiating from it. The thick layers of dead skin caked on it smelled. The room fell quiet, the doctor, the nurse, and I could only stare at my arm.

I spent the next few weeks with increasing pain, and increasing pills, which were as effective as placebos. Within a couple of months, I had a diagnosis. Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, the injury at work sent my nerves into a never-ending cycle of the Fight or Flight Syndrome. In the process, destroying all tissue in its path. Incurable, unstoppable - and it had begun to spread.

While this was happening, my company stopped Workers' Compensation benefits. At one point, I went off of my morphine-equivalent pain relievers cold turkey because of losing my benefits. That is when I found on the internet, a story about a man with RSD. He had participated in the 1999 Institute of Medicine research on medical marijuana. It was the best thing anyone had ever given him.

I read the report, and continued my research. I began to play with an idea. I kept reading, I discussed it with my husband, and I got on my knees about it, too.

When life gets rough, I go back to the basics. What was my Number One Priority? My son - I could risk jail, and take a chance to live a more normal life, take care of my son, and myself or, I could let my body wither away in front of my kindergarteners' eyes. - No child should witness such suffering. I should be able to hug him.

I finally won my Workers' Compensation hearings, and all three appeals. I was granted one consultation visit at a pain clinic. Things were finally going to get better I thought.

I went to the appointment, and met a doctor that informed me he had never seen or heard of my disease. He told me that I could probably teach him about it. Discouraged, I went home. To find my street blocked off, fire trucks and police all over the place. The house next door had caught fire.

While trying to evacuate my house, they found my pot plants. After being screamed at, called names, and had false accusations leveled at me by the detective, which was all witnessed by neighbors, my husband and I were arrested, and charged as felons.

The worst thing on my record before this was a seat belt ticket. At the hardest time in my life, my government was punishing me for trying to alleviate my suffering.

Today, I spend my days fighting the government for the right to fight my disease, and ease my pain. I fear what the government will do. Let me be clear, though. That fear, pales in comparison to my fear of not waking up at all, when my RSD attacks a vital organ.

My husband is only 39 years old. He is a veteran who suffers from PTSD, Gulf War Syndrome, and has broken his back three different times. He has severe nerve impingement.

Our lives consist of dealing with old nightmares, bouts of unexplained illnesses that consist of muscle cramps, chills, fever, vomiting, and severe pain. Some days he must use a cane to get around and there is a wheelchair standing ready in the corner for the really bad days.

Without the use of medical cannabis, we go back to the nights I am awakened with his hands around my neck, fighting the unseen enemy soldier. The kind and gentle man I married almost 16 years ago no longer exists during these times.

PTSD is a living hell for him and our family. The days he awakens early and begins throwing up and has muscle spasms that bend his 6' frame in half, when he sits with tears streaming down his face because he is so sick and the pain he lives with daily.

He now takes methadone and oxycodone to combat it, has tried the dangerous spinal nerve blocks and morphine patches are next, but it is never completely relieved. The medical cannabis calms his nightmares, it stops the vomiting and it helps to ease his pain. Marijuana gives us back some semblance of an ordinary life.

I also use this God-given miraculous herb. I have several maladies that include neuropathy pain from diabetes, CHF, asthma, severe depression and glaucoma. I was on 17 different medications daily, five of which were for the depression alone. I have been able to discontinue those five because of marijuana.

We are not criminals or second-class citizens! Yet, we live in fear, our government says our medication is illegal; our small organic garden would put us behind bars if discovered still, the relief obtained outweighs the fear. It is a sad irony that the same government that he gave so much for would prosecute him for so little.