A medical marijuana pilot program at a local West Palm Beach area senior living facility is showing promising results.
MorseLife Health System is the only senior living provider in Florida to offer cannabinoid-based therapies for its clients as part of a state-authorized pilot program.
Marijuana or cannabis is used to treat things like pain, anxiety, and insomnia and the MorseLife Health Care system is working to treat people using the drug without getting them high.
“I have a low pain in my lower back. That’s always giving me pain and now I’ve had pain in my neck.” said patient Carol Slater. “I don’t know what’s going on with my neck but it clicks and it hurts.”
Up until recently, Carol was treating her pain through cortisone shots until she contacted a local doctor who specializes in cannabis therapies.
“So I called Dr. Bone and she came to see me and she gave me some CBD. And we started off low. The lowest dose. She has this cream and I felt a difference,” said Carol.
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Her doctor, Melanie Bone says patients like Carol are perfect for MorseLife Health Care System’s pilot program.
“In seniors, I think it’s really good for arthritic chronic, My body hurts, my knees hurt, I tried to stand up, my back hurts. For that, I think cannabis is amazing,” said Doctor Bone.
Doctor Bone says she prescribes CBS or THC products like creams, drops, capsules, and gummies to her patients.
For Carol, the CBD cream works best. She uses it daily and says it makes a world of a difference.
“I feel like I could get on with my life without it getting in the way,” said Carol.
MorseLife is the only senior living provider in the state authorized to offer cannabis-related therapies to clients. The Health system’s CEO and President, Keith Myers, says they’ve been working on this for about 4 years now and hope their program becomes a model for other senior care organizations.
“Innovation is part of the foundation of MorseLife we are very interested in partaking in the latest and greatest in senior care and then piloting it so that other senior organizations could take advantage and learn from us,” said Myers.
Doctor Bone says the goal is pain management and not to get seniors.
“Although occasionally, somebody might get high unintentionally, they didn’t follow the directions that, for example, for the most part, the patients have relief of their symptoms without impairment, which is our goal,” said Dr. Bone.
And without the constant pain, Carol says she’s able to focus on the things she loves to do.
“I’m in a lot of card games. today. I’m playing bridge tomorrow. I’m playing canasta I’ve been asked to play in the Mazon game,” said Carol.
Doctor Bone says treatments involving CBD and THC help people move away from narcotic pain medicine, but while she says cannabis is a great option for some it doesn’t always work for everyone.
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0:00 Seniors using marijuana: Local health system sees success in medical marijuana pilot program
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