Research & Innovation

Jordon Burling-Mumford is our ‘Minister without Portfolio’ at Medicaleaf™. After a chance meeting on a train, Jordan shared his story, one which may be resonant for some or illustrative for others. He joins our team to share his story, support our cause and our mission to improve the quality of life for those suffering from pain and ailments and to work toward an effective solution for himself and others – or die trying.

Yes, Jordan has been given a deadline. His conditions have names and excruciating, painful symptoms. His medical team after countless consultations, interventions, surgeries and solutions can offer nothing more than pain relief for his slowly decaying nerve cluster - diagnosed as ‘S1 Gangliotic Radiculopathy’, the result of a recent ‘absent seizure’.

He tells us…” My parents arrived in the U.S. as poor immigrants with two small children and are now happy, successful, and fulfilled, one a medic the other a rocket scientist. I was a fit, strong, skateboarding, wave-riding beach boy from California who excelled at soccer. At school I was an academic achiever, the class leader, finishing tests first and setting the curve with my scores. In sport, I set the record for the number of goals scored in one season in my entire county's history.” and now…

At the tender age of 16 whilst was driving home from school, he blacked out at the wheel – experiencing his first epileptic fit. Despite crashing off a bridge and rolling the car several times – he survived without a scratch. His father and grandfather had also been sufferers and epilepsy (a condition which has played a large part in the injuries sustained alongside three ACL knee replacements, double broken wrists, concussions, spinal disc degeneration and CMS (Cluster Migraine Syndrome) etc) lead to the chronic pain he now experiences over various parts of his body and the permanent injury related to a seizure.

Over the years, after unsatisfactory surgical interventions, the medical solution became opiates to control pain.

To describe the pain would simply not reflect the day-in day-out and through the night, unrelenting, stabbing, piercing, torturing experience that is Jordan.

And yet it is not. Jordan continues…

“I’ve been informed that I will lose the ability to walk in a couple of years; I rarely sleep due to my constant pain, (a dangerous sleep pattern for an epileptic triggered by "lack of sleep”); I was in the grip of opioids (pain killers, some as strong as 4,800 times the strength of codeine, 500 times stronger than morphine on a daily basis - just to feel "normal"); the pain opiates caused me to inflict on the people around me; my hopes and dreams dashed; a seizure 18 months ago that started nerve pain and nerve death; an indefinite deadline on my life. All this – but it’s changed. I realised that I had got ‘Sick of Being Sick’, sick of lying to hide my diagnosis and my addiction and the abuse of opiates (it had got so bad).

Until ‘the moment when’… realising I had become blinded by my own decline, pain, suffering, and dependency, I sought clarity. I eventually came off opiates all together, my mental clarity was crystal clear, my thoughts, my mind, my attitude changed. I am alive today because I made a choice to fight pain without opiates.

Today, I am not pain free. I continue to work as an investment specialist for a large bank and commute an hour a day, my family depend on me but also support me. My clear mission is to share my story and my ongoing journey, exploring the use of cannabinoids. Working with Medicaleaf I will be an advocate and live-tester of our products. With my scientific background and training I will be involved in ongoing clinical trials and sharing regular updates via our website and as a face of the business. To know that there is an alternative to the physical, mental, familial, financial and many more side-affects (think Trainspotting x 100) of regularly prescribed opiate pain relief and to bring that relief to others will see me go happy.”