Since it was signed into law in April 2016, the Commonwealth’s medical marijuana program has grown rapidly, with more than 580,000 patients and caregivers and 119 operational dispensaries in the program today. For newly certified patients, there may be a lot of questions and uncertainty about how to begin their journey.
Our new Prospective Patient Perspective newsletter series will offer helpful education for program newcomers to demystify medical marijuana therapies for all qualified patients, at any knowledge level. In each edition, we’ll provide a hypothetical profile of a Pennsylvania patient, who is living with one of the 23 qualifying conditions and explore how our prime products may potentially improve their daily quality of life. Today, you’ll meet “Amy” and learn about her options for potentially alleviating chronic pain with medical marijuana.
Meet Amy:
Amy is a dedicated mother to her family and their playful puppy, a dynamic leader in her workplace, and a daily walker. Amy also happens to be among the 50 million American adults living with chronic pain, the result of a torn ACL sustained during previous athletic training. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) defines chronic pain as a long-term experience of pain, typically sustained over three months, that exceeds a patient’s expected healing timeline and impacts their quality of life. Amy’s chronic knee pain affects her overall physical and mental well-being.
Things like exercising the dog or just getting through the work day have become increasingly taxing. Even getting a good night’s rest has become a nightly concern. Amy’s pain poses major challenges to her overall quality of life, but she remains hopeful that her new medical marijuana certification might get her up and moving toward a brighter tomorrow.
Meeting Amy’s Dispensary:
For new patients in the program, the first dispensary visit can feel intimidating. Amy, who is a beginner to marijuana use, may experience apprehension about making medication choices due to her limited familiarity with the available product forms. Fortunately, each dispensary in the state is mandated to have a licensed pharmacist on site, who is available to meet with patients wanting more education about what products might benefit them.
Our prime team truly values each patients’ experience with our product line and prepares custom batch notes for each shipment from our facility to dispensary shelves. They outline product details patients may see when they open our packaging, such as variations in concentrate color and texture, as well as flower structure and aromas. Amy can ask a patient care consultant, one of the friendly faces staffing the counter of her local dispensary, to review the batch notes for any prime product that interests her.
Meeting Amy’s Medical Needs:
Between a full workload and a busy family life, Amy’s schedule doesn’t have much room to spare. Her local dispensary staff will be happy to provide medication options that can help simplify her dosing process. Working with patient care consultants, Amy might explore prime live resin cartridges – potent, high-terpene live concentrates in a ready-to-use form. Our prime live resin cartridges provide the potential for quick and discreet relief, via a simple inhale. If Amy is seeking daytime pain relief without sedative effects, strains like African Thai #15, with its true sativa lineage and high limonene content, may potentially be helpful.
For nighttime use, Amy might explore prime products such as our THC blend tincture. Crafted from 100% marijuana-derived distillate and MCT oil, a concentrated source of fatty acids derived from coconuts, our tincture features impressive cannabinoid content that may potentially provide sustained relief throughout the night and enable Amy to get some much-needed rest.
For more information on our prime-grown products, follow our Instagram at prime.wellness.
