Mele Kalikimaka (Merry Christmas in Hawaiian)

Its that time of year again where it seems like there is never enough time to do everything that we need to do. With just 21 days left before Christmas, it’s a mad rush to try to get everything finished in time.

Along with Christmas, its also the time of year when those of us with credentials that require a certain number of Continuing Education hours each year to maintain try to scramble to fill the void, and this is what I have been doing this past week.

I noticed that I was going to be 6 hours short of my required CE hours and began to get nervous, but then I found the Hawaii Department of Health Education Conference on December 1st and 2nd which counted for 11.5 CE hours so I was saved for another year.

This year there were speakers giving presentations on a variety of topics from Shigella to Bed Bugs and from lead paint to the radiation in Hawaii from Japan’s nuclear reactor disaster, a very wide range of topics.

One topic that I found very interesting was one given by the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR) on Aquaponic Agriculture. This method is similar to Hydroponics where the plants are grown in a soilless environment where water is used to deliver the required nutrients to the plants, however with the Aquaponics system additional nutrients are not added to the water system as they are with hydroponics.

Aquaponics is a symbiotic relationship between the plants and the fish where each one benefits which uses a fraction of the water, labor, and energy that other growing systems require creating a sustainable and self-sufficient closed-loop system.

With the aquaponics  system the water that flows through the planting bed comes from a separate tank that contains live fish. The fish provide the nitrogen in their natural waste which is then delivered to the plants which clean and filter the water. Then the filtered clean water is returned to the fish tank once again. The complete cycle is actually very simple, and mimics what happens in a natural aquatic and marshland environment.

Several large commercial agricultural farms on the island of Oahu are already using this aquaponic method for their fruits and vegetables including one farm which is able to produce thousands of heads of lettuce per month for the past year with this system. The aquaponics system allows them to produce plants with larger leaves and fruit much faster than by traditional methods using soil.

CTHAR has researched this new method so much that they are now able to calculate exactly how many fish you will need in the system to produce a certain number of heads of lettuce.

I am very interested in this new aquaponics system and its possible use for growing the medical cannabis that I require to relieve my debilitating migraines as well as fresh herbs. I will be researching this further over the next few months and will be setting up an aquaponics system in my greenhouse to test it out on herbs, fruits & vegetables that I will be using in my own kitchen. I will also be creating a completely green aquaponics system using solar power to run the pumps instead of hooking the system up to the electrical grid and I am collecting rain water to fill the system with.

I must point out that initially it is a very expensive system to get started, but afterwards it is much cheaper because you do not have the ongoing need to purchase nutrients and fertilizers which can become very expensive as you normally would growing with other means. Since I will be utilizing solar power there is also the additional expense for the batteries and solar panels.

I will keep you updated on the progress of the aquaponics system as it progresses and post some photos as I get the system up and running.

Mele Kalikimaka me ka Hau’oli Makahiki Hou

(Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year)

Migraines – No Relief

I apologize for my absence in postings this week. I have been suffering from several severe migraines. It is very difficult to concentrate with a migraine, or any type of severe pain for that matter.

It feels like someone keeps hitting me in the head with a hammer whenever I move, speak, read, or even breath. Light, sound, and odor sensitivity are also symptoms that I deal with because of them.

Unfortunately I am one of the very rare sufferers of migraines, cluster headaches and  chronic paroxysmal hemicrania (CPH), which are very similar to cluster beaches except they fortunately only last a few seconds at a time.

I have suffered from migraines for 25 years now, and frequent severe chronic migraines for the past 10 years. The cluster headaches and CPH are a more recent development within the last 5 or 6 years.

As I said, I have frequent migraines, often three or four times per week. The last episode lasting a full 36 hours before it finally subsided.

My night stand resembles a pharmacy with all the medicine bottles of Morphine, Vicodin, Percocet, etc. that I am taking almost on a daily basis. For the cluster headaches I now have portable Oxygen tanks that I use for High-Flow Oxygen therapy. I have taken the narcotics so long now that I have built up a strong tolerance to them. I am what they refer to as “opioid-tolerant”.

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Last night, like many others I could not control the pain and found myself at the Emergency Room for my usual “Migraine Cocktail”, a mixture of IV fluids, Magnesium, Morphine, Valium & Toradol. Unfortunately there is nothing more that the E.R. can do for me because I have already been given over the daily limit of narcotics. So I sign myself out of the E.R. and drive myself home.

Yes, I said I drive myself home. When the migraines first started a strong narcotic would knock me out, like they should. But since I have taken them for so long now, I do not even feel them any longer. They do not make me drowsy in the least. Taking a Vicodin or Percocet now is almost like taking an Ibuprofen to me.

At times I have had to take 2 or 3 Morphine tablets along with 4 Vicodin just to knock the edge off the migraine so that I can relax enough to try to sleep.

I have tried just about everything with no relief. Acupuncture, Botox, numerous daily prophylactic medications, Magnesium infusions, nasal sprays, auto-injections, herbal medications, NSAIDS, eye drops, and the list goes on.

About every 6 months or so they order a new CT scan or MRI. I was even sent for an Echocardiogram to see if I had a small hole in the valve of my heart that could be the cause of my migraines. All with no positive results. The only result that I can see is an increase in the frequency, duration and intensity of the migraines.

They even talked about a nerve block, but IF it worked, it would only last from a couple hours to a few days at most. No thanks.

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In the past 25 years I have only found one treatment that seems to work every single time without fail, Medical cannabis or medical marijuana. Several years ago I was in a research test on the effectiveness of cannabis on migraines. In the trial, for the first time ever, I received relief from the migraine pain almost immediately. After the trial ended I was subjected once again to narcotics.

I actually moved to Hawaii because of what I learned in that research trial once I found out that Hawaii had passed a law making medical cannabis legal here. Unfortunately that was all they did. Pass a law on paper. They have done nothing since 2000 to upgrade the states medical cannabis program so that it actually works to help the patients.

It makes me mad when I sit here knowing that medical cannabis works for my migraines, and relieves the pain within just a few seconds, but I have no access to it.

Sure I have a license from the State of Hawaii that says I can have it and use it to treat my migraines, but there is no where to get it from here. The way the law is set up here, it is legal for me to have possession of it, but its not legal for me to get it.

There is no legal way in Hawaii to acquire it. You must grow it or have a caregiver grow it for you, but there is no legal way to get seeds or starter plants so that you CAN grow it.

Thats about as asinine as the state handing someone a drivers license, and then saying “by the way there are no cars here, and you can’t have one shipped in either”.

It just doesn’t make any sense to me.