Linda I am so happy that you got to speak to Dr. Feldman and that he was
able to help!

He recommended that I try stopping the pot use as well - but when I did it
was worse than when I was smoking it therefore he said I should/could go
back to smoking it since it was not the cause of any of my symptoms.

It is extremely sad how few Gastro Dr's have NEVER heard of CVS - I wish
there were more that could be done to familiarize some of them at least with
the symptoms and such.

I hope that all turns out well for you and your son!!

Tina


-------Original Message-------

From: Linda Piersma
Date: 6/16/2009 5:39:59 PM
To: cyclicvomitingsyndrome@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome] Appt. with Dr. Feldman




Hi Mary, Tina and all. We met with Dr. Feldman a week ago Monday. He is
indeed a very kind and very knowledgeable man. He had just returned from
Chicago where he met with 4 other CVS specialists. He mentioned that he also
recently spoke to a group of 145 gastro doctors and only a couple of them
had even heard of cvs. Sad, isn't it?

The long and short of our meeting - our son definitely has cvs, which was no
surprise to us. But it did give us a sense of relief to have him tell us
that so much of what he experiences is part of cvs. Dr. Feldman considers
stress is a major contributor to it. With our son having Tourettes syndrome,
stress is part of his make-up.

One issue Dr. Feldman brought up early on was pot use. When my son said he
did smoke at least once a day on a regular basis for anxiety as well as
nausea, Dr. Feldman suggested that the effects of pot could begin to cause
the very symptoms it's being taken to avoid. He asked my son if he would be
willing to stop using pot for 6 weeks to rule it out as a cause of his (at
least) weekly abdominal migraine episodes and prescribed klonopin wafers to
use while he's weaning himself off pot. My son agreed to abstain until he
sees Dr. Feldman again in 6 weeks. He smoked the last of his pot last
Tuesday and while he has had to take zofran for nausea almost daily during
the past week, he has not had any abdominal pain or vomiting. I would say
that's pretty remarkable for him. I don't know if the nausea and anxiety
lessen somewhat as time goes by with continued abstinence. Hailey or Mary do
either of you know?

Another thing that came up at the meeting was the use of suboxone as a pain
management medication. My son has been using it for a number of years now
since getting rebound from Stadol NS. Dr. Feldman was interested in how well
it worked. It works pretty well a lot of the time. And even when pain breaks
through, it prevents visits to the ER.

Did anyone watch Anderson Cooper 360 last night? He's had a series all week
about legalizing pot but last night's program had 2 brief interviews. One
with Melissa Etherege who used pot during her chemo treatment 5 years ago
and still uses it. She said it was wonderful for her cancer needs. The other
was an unknown Bipolar woman who used an unlimited amount of medical pot for
anxiety. She said that while the pot made her feel better for the first few
years, by the 3rd year of unlimited use, the pot made her anxiety and
depression worse and she became hooked on it. Something then was said rather
quickly - that pot worked well for physical ailments with symptoms like
nausea and pain but cauld cause extended neurobiological problems for people
with mental disorders. I was waiting for something to be mentioned about
cannabis toxicity but it never came up.

So there you go. My son really misses it but is staying off the pot, at
least for now. Thank you, Tina, for recommending Dr. Feldman. We had never
heard of him before and had no idea he shared the office at Cedars with Dr.
Fleisher at one time.

I'll give updates as times goes on.

Linda

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]