Todd was stuck in a state of limbo. He was making use of cannabis to help his recovery, but it wasn’t enough
Our bodies possess an incredible array of organs which we take for granted every day of our lives. For most of us we never have to consider just how amazing our internal workings are, yet the fact of the matter is that an inconceivable number of processes are occurring every single second of every single day just to stop us from falling to pieces (not literally, but you get what I mean). As many members of the cannabis community are becoming increasingly aware, the endocannabinoid system utilizes the various compounds found within cannabis to help the body maintain a state of balance known as homeostasis, but the true extent of its healing power is still something which staggers belief. Recently, we were speaking to Todd Moon about his life in Colorado and he shared with us an experience relating to how he used cannabis to heal which was too amazing not to share.
Back in 2012 Todd’s mother-in-law sadly passed away and he went with his son to make the usual arrangements. Understandably, this was a difficult time for everyone involved and Todd just wanted to keep it together while they did right by the family. After the funeral he was getting everything organized to return home and booked a flight for the next day. When he woke up the next morning he found that he felt slightly out of sorts but didn’t think too much of it. Next thing he knew, he had suffered a heart attack before he even got to the airport.
Todd was rushed to hospital and they worked furiously to stabilize his condition. During the process he had two stents installed, but the surgery did not run smoothly and he suffered from a haematoma which hindered his recovery greatly and put him out of action for more than a year.
While he was recovering, Todd was trying to maintain his business from the outside and had to rely on his business partner and employees to keep everything in working order. Sadly, their working relationship began to dissolve and it was decided that it would be best for Todd to sell his half of the business to his partner so that he could reinvest his efforts elsewhere. As part of the deal it was agreed that Todd could retain his health insurance to ensure that he got the help he needed to maximize his recovery, but once he had started preparing to move away he found that his partner was not a man of his word.
Suddenly he found himself in a desperate situation: his lack of health insurance meant that he couldn’t get his prescription medication and insurance companies saw him as a liability and wouldn’t take him on as a new customer. Todd was stuck in a state of limbo. He was making use of cannabis to help his recovery, but it wasn’t enough to ensure that he wouldn’t suffer from another heart attack without the prescribed medication as well. His only option was to purchase medication without prescription from Mexico, so that’s exactly what he did with the support of his parents. Over the next few months he had to put his plans on hold and focus solely on attaining his medicine by any means necessary.
Eventually, his recommended recovery period passed and he visited a doctor to get an echocardiogram. The results showed that he was making good progress and he got the all-clear to fly to Colorado so that he could start his new life.
Once he had got settled in, Todd started hiking and doing hi-elevation hikes each weekend to keep himself active and ensure that he kept his heart in good condition. He loved the freedom he found on the magnificent trails and looked forward to each week’s escapades. One particular weekend he was out with his friends from the Front Range Singles group (an active group for singles in the Denver area) and they completed a 12-mile hike. This was pretty much a run-of-the-mill day for them and Todd felt on top of the world. When they met up again the following day, Todd decided that he was going to follow a more challenging trail and separated from the rest of the group. Little did he know that this decision was going to leave his life in jeopardy.
A few hours later, as he gradually made his way up the steep incline he felt an all-too-familiar feeling coming over him. He found himself breaking out in a cold sweat, his left arm suddenly became numb and his chest began to erupt with intense pain. Todd knew that these were serious indicators of a heart attack, so he sat down and reached into his backpack. Luckily for him, one of the EMT responders who treated him after his first heart attack told him that he should carry chewable baby aspirins with him at all times because they are absorbed into the body more quickly and have a better chance of keeping you alive and conscious once a heart attack takes hold. With this invaluable information in mind, he ate four of the aspirin tablets while he sat on his pack and assessed his situation.
Going back the way he came was not an option; he had gone too far over the treacherous ground to simply retrace his steps. Across the way he could see an alternative trail which was much more direct and would be conducive to success in his current state 3 mile but he would have to pull himself over the cut-off and make his way over some rough terrain to get to it. He didn’t have any choice but to go for it.
It took four hours for him to reach the bottom of the trail. When he got back to ground level his blood oxygen level was dangerously low and he struggled to think straight; he hiked to his car, drove home, got changed into his Bob Marley t-shirt and then drove himself to the hospital (not something he recommends, by the way).
By some miracle he managed to drive to the hospital without further incident and parked his car outside the doors to the emergency room. Pushing himself ever forward on nothing more than will power, Todd dragged himself through reception and lunged for the desk. The reception asked if she could help him and he simply replied, “I’m having a heart attack.” Without realizing he was deadly serious, the receptionist chirpily replied, “Well, you’re in the right place: that’s our specialty.” Suddenly it dawned on her that Todd really was in serious trouble and they rushed to get him a wheelchair. A quick EKG revealed that his blood-oxygen levels were at 18%. Todd should have been dead already as a healthy level of blood oxygen is above 90%. On the gurney as he was being rushed for emergency surgery he we getting his ear bent by the nurse who tore him a new one for driving in his condition.
When he woke up he was greeted by a nurse telling him that a balloon pump had been inserted into his artery. Because of the delicate nature of the procedure and the time needed for him to heal properly he was told that he couldn’t move at all: he couldn’t sit up, he couldn’t turn over of his own accord and he wasn’t even allowed to cough because any movement could cause the balloon to burst. At Todd’s request, they tied him to bed with securing straps. Once the scans came back, he was informed that his heart was at a 19% fraction rate which is below the 20% minimum level required for a person to be automatically placed on the heart transplant list.
As Todd processed the news that he now faced a wait for a new heart, he found that he had a nagging pain from a big knot in the muscles of his back. Since he couldn’t get up and stretch or have a massage he asked the nurse if they could fetch him his medical marijuana edibles from his backpack. His request was denied as it was not ‘real medicine’ or prescribed by a ‘real doctor’. Todd was frustrated to find that the leading doctor and nurse had no knowledge of how medicinal marijuana could have helped him in his current states, but they maintained their stance that they couldn’t allow him to be given cannabis on the premises. He had to lie still and deal with the aggravation of the knot.
After a week in hospital he left with a defibrillator–linked heart monitor (also known as a lifevest) strapped to his body. This, in Todd’s own words, is ‘truly awesome technology’ that monitored his heart 24/7 and could give him an emergency shock if his heart failed. On the day he left he got given some full spectrum oil (Angel Tears) by his caregiver which he combined with some high CBD bud he had been cultivating before his heart attack. He knew that cannabis was his medicine of choice and he firmly believed it would aid his recovery. He had to return to hospital after 30 days to see if he could get his fraction rate back above 20% in order to get him off the transplant list and subsequently organise a heart monitoring system for him to use long-term. When he returned to the hospital for his follow-up heart echo the doctors were stunned. His results came back at 48%.
Todd was overjoyed at the results, but he had already filed for disability and was informed, despite his need to still focus on a gradual and extended period of continued rehabilitation, that his astonishing recovery meant his application for disability was likely to be denied. To this day he is still fighting the ruling. Now he has a 68% fraction rate and the doctors are not willing to accept that this is because of him medicating with CBD and THC. They are not willing to even investigate what has happened and the doctors routinely ask him if he uses non-prescribed drugs when he goes for a check-up. Because Todd always confirms and reiterates that he uses medicinal marijuana he is seen as a criminal and treated with disdain.
Todd has since been fighting to get his disability reinstated, but the courts claim he can work. Every time Todd has looked for work he has found that employers are not willing to take him on because he is deemed as a liability and costs too much to insure. When asked why he tells potential employers about his condition he explains that he refuses to be a closet pot smoker. In his opinion, we should all be free to live as we are and cannabis saved his life, so why should he hide or change? So, now he can’t get a job working for anyone else and has a 3 year blank in his resume. By all rights he should be registered as disabled but he got screwed by the system and now he can’t get healthcare and nobody wants to take a risk on him. It’s a sad sign of the times that someone who has gone through so much has to live a lesser standard of life because of bureaucracy, but this is how it is for him.
Looking back on this moment, Todd explains that he thought back to what the Stanley brothers had started with Charlotte’s Web and explained to us that he felt that their work should have made Colorado a mecca of CBD, but instead he finds himself plagued by the age-old hypocrisy which has been around for decades. When you have someone who is living proof that cannabis can even fix a broken heart, surely it’s time for people to finally wake up and admit the truth?
Originally published in Weed World Magazine Issue 134
