I pulled a calf at 2 AM on the eighth of April, 2019, in a head catch behind the calving barn while it was snowing sideways and nineteen degrees. The heifer was a first-calfer, the calf was breech, and I had my arms in up to the elbows when something in my lower back went the direction it wasn't supposed to go. I finished the pull. The calf stood up twenty minutes later, which was more than I could say for myself.
The doctor in Buffalo said herniated disc at L4-L5, moderate stenosis at L3-L4. He recommended surgery. Three to four months recovery. It was April. Calving wasn't done. Haying starts in June. I said no.
So I took ibuprofen. Eight hundred milligrams, three times a day, for over a year. It worked on the pain the way a rock works on a wasp nest — knocked it back but didn't solve the problem, and the side effects were worse than the original trouble. My stomach went bad. I switched to naproxen. Same story, slower.
The doctor prescribed tramadol for the worst days. I took it for three months. The pain was better. Everything else was worse. I was foggy. Slow. I left a gate open moving cattle and lost six head for two days in the timber on the east side of the ranch. A man who can't keep track of his own cows has no business being on tramadol. I quit it.
For about eight months after that, the plan was ibuprofen when I could take it and gritting my teeth when I couldn't. Karen — my wife — watched me not sleep. Two, three hours a night, sometimes four. A body that hurts doesn't rest, and a body that doesn't rest hurts more. That arithmetic doesn't work out.
December 2020, my daughter Jenny came home from Bozeman for Christmas. She'd brought a jar of THC topical salve for her own sore shoulders. Karen saw it. She waited until I'd stopped being ornery about anything and rubbed it into my lower back without asking permission.
I slept six hours. Hadn't slept more than four in nearly two years.
I didn't say anything about it for a week. Then I asked Karen to call Jenny and get the details. I drove to Billings and walked into a dispensary feeling like a man who had no business being there. I am sixty-two years old. I have been ranching the same ground since 1982. Standing in a dispensary was not something I had planned for.
The woman behind the counter was patient. She asked what hurt and for how long. She didn't try to sell me anything fancy. She pointed me toward a topical salve and a tin of low-dose edibles — 2.5 milligrams each.
Here is what I can say about the topical. It goes on like any other salve. Greasy, faintly green-smelling. Takes about fifteen to twenty minutes to start working. It does not make the pain disappear. What it does is take the sharp edge off so a person can move. On a day when my back is a six out of ten, the salve brings it to a three or a four. That is the difference between feeding cattle and not feeding cattle. It lasts three to four hours. I reapply it midday if the work is heavy. A jar runs about forty dollars and lasts me three weeks.
The edibles I take only on bad nights. One 2.5-milligram piece, sometimes two if the day was rough. Five milligrams is my limit. More than that and I feel thick in the head the next morning, which is no good when there are animals to check at first light. At 2.5 milligrams, the effect is mild. A loosening. The muscles in my lower back stop gripping and I can lie flat without the spasm that usually wakes me at 1 AM. I sleep five to six hours on those nights. A tin of ten edibles costs around twenty dollars and lasts me two to three weeks because I don't take them every night.
I don't smoke. I don't vape. Those are not for me and I leave it at that.
No one should read this and think cannabis fixed my back. It didn't. The disc is still herniated. The stenosis is still there. On bad days I still move like a man whose back is bad, because it is. What cannabis did is give me a way to manage the pain that doesn't tear up my stomach and doesn't make me lose track of my own cattle. That is worth something. How much it's worth is for each person to decide.
I am not a doctor. I don't know what will work for someone else's body. But I spent two years trying everything the doctor offered and the thing that finally let me sleep came home in my daughter's suitcase at Christmas. That is a strange thing to sit with, but there it is.