Overcoming our Limits with DiAnA McElroy
Christina: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of I am Christina DiArcangelo and today with me I have my guest, Diana McElroy. McElroy. Did I say your last name?
Diana: McElroy
Christina: Okay, great. Thank you.
Diana: Thank you.
Christina: One of the things you're welcome. One of the things I am horrible at is pronunciation. I mispronounce things all the time and I never mean any disrespect. Sometimes I even give people other names because they look like that name instead of and it's not me being pompous, it's just kind of what I do. So welcome, Diana, to the show. We're so glad to have you today.
Diana: Thank you so much for the invite. I have to tell you right off the bat, I identify with so much of what you say. I'm an ESL student. I'm like guessing, especially if it's a name I've never seen before because I tend to read from memory. So, yeah, I totally identify with that.
Christina: It's difficult. I've been like this my whole life and as a kid, growing up, I actually had some learning deficiencies. I couldn't comprehend what I read and I was horrible at math, which is both of those tools, I use and skills every day of my life. I've now figured out many years later, that I have a photographic memory. So when you said you read by memory, I understand that because I could work on a budget grid that's I don't know, thousands of lines long and I can remember that row 56 has studied drug pricing in it and that's where you're going to find it, and you're going to see the unit size and the duration of 36 months for the trial.
That's how my mind thinks. It's so weird. It's so cool to meet somebody else that does the same thing, because not a lot of people talk about it because it's embarrassing and it's like a superpower. Why can't we just talk about it now?
Diana: I think learning how you learn is really valuable. I move schools every two years and different education styles, different formats of how they imprinted education on you and I learned things along the way.
People make fun of me, but even to this day, when I go to an event, I bring my notebook with me and I take notes because I've learned that the way something imprints is, if I write it down, that's how I got through college, that's how I got my education, is index cards and the process of writing.
Christina: Repetition.
Diana: Yes, exactly. Some people don't need that. You have a photographic memory. I don't. I need something to imprint on me.
Christina: Well, it's interesting because it doesn't always work. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. So if I wanted to stay in, I'll repeat things to myself quietly, almost like Rain Man, which sounds goofy, but that's what I do. Like line 52. Line 52. And so I learned the same way with like I learned with flashcards and repetition. I remember learning my times tables in third grade, but that's when they figured out there was an issue as going into fourth grade and ironically, my son just started fourth grade this year, and so I can recall all these things because my dad was like, listen, we need to help fix this issue, because she needs to be able to comprehend what she's reading, and she needs to know her math.
Diana: No. God bless that you had that advocacy. No one in my family spoke English until I was in high school, so I found my own coping skills, and again, moving every two years. The school system never kind of caught up with me. They never always a new kid, so trying to figure out where she fits in. I laugh. I am extremely blind. Like, if I take these off, everything is fuzzy. I've had a couple of drinks in 6th grade. They realize that she's not the squinty kid that she can't see.
Christina: Yeah, you just need glasses.
Diana: Yeah, exactly. But they just assume. That was my natural expression. Look at her. She's always smiling. And I do smile a lot, but I'm focusing, and then I talk a lot. So they put me in the back, which didn't serve me.
Christina: Yes. Same thing. I talked all the time, but they put me at the front because I talked all the time, and they wanted to keep an eye on me, so I didn't get away with being in the back, so at least I felt like I was learning more. But I was under the microscope all the time for talking and my kids it's funny to see how our kids mimic some of the things that we've done, because it's genetic, and he's always talking to people, and I'm always like, Chris, you got to stop talking. Like Christian, stop talking. Don't talk. Well, mom, you talk all the time. Well, that's a different story. Chris, it's work. I have to talk. I have to be on Zooms. I have to do these things. But there's a time and place to be quiet, and you've got to be quiet.
Diana: It's hard. It's hard, especially when you feel like you want to say something. There's a last story I'll share. There's a family joke that I got in trouble PS 105 in the Bronx for talking. I didn't speak English yet. My uncle looks, he's like, who are you talking to? Like, no one understands Polish. Like, who are you talking to? I would just talk to the other kids, and I always laugh because we have play dates, and they didn't speak my language. I didn't speak their language. But figure out a way.
Christina: But the toys and the games are universal, so at least you could kind of play you could figure out, which is pretty cool.
Diana: That's how I learned English. It's eating an apple and we go apple. Apple.
Christina: So awesome. My son, when he was little, and he was learning English as his first language, and he understands Farsi and Italian, but my Italian is different because my dad was Sicilian and my mom is Northern. So our dialect is like a hybrid in my household. But when my kid was little and my dad was trying to teach him colors, he had fruit snacks, and so he would hold up a fruit snack and say, Christian, what color is this? It's green. This is green and so it's funny that you said that about the apple because it's the same thing. Like, again, it's repetition. It's just constantly repeating yourself so you can learn.
Diana: 100% I've used that skill set and learning everything I could about cannabis and the industry and the products. So 110% everything I've learned as a kid, I've just transferred to as an adult and have pushed forward with it.
Christina: It's awesome to build our toolbox at that point and just continuously building and not looking at this as an impediment. But looking at this as a way to challenge yourself and achieve things that you never thought you would be able to achieve. You know.
Diana: 110% And showing our kids like. This was one thing that I learned for me as a parent. Showing my kids that you don't have to be great at something coming out of the gate. I always tease my girls, like, don't peek in middle school. Don't even peak in high school. You can keep fostering and growing.
I'm turning 50 in a couple of months, and I feel like my life is just getting started in some ways.
Christina: I love that and I talked to my son about that all the time. He had something happen this week at school, and I was like, well, did you try your best? And he goes, well, yeah, mom, I tried my best. I said, okay, well, then, as long as you try your best and now we just have to figure out how to fine tune some of these skills that you seem to need some help with, you'll be fine.
I mean, this is how everybody learns with making mistakes, correcting the mistakes, acknowledging it and going forward and not being embarrassed because we don't know everything. I learned stuff all the time.
All the time, especially in the cannabis space, because it's ever evolving and there's so much stuff going on and it's funny when somebody comes up with a post on LinkedIn about something and you're like, Listen,
I knew about that two years ago. I just didn't talk about it because there's a lot of things that I don't want to share because I'm doing stuff that is proprietary.
Diana: It's so funny because maybe that's the problem. I share everything. I find this industry to be very evolving so quickly. We're on the East Coast, so New Jersey, New York are constantly having new rules and regulations come out where we're literally building the laws in movement as the industry is opening up and I find it fascinating, never mind the health and wellness aspect of it.
Christina: Yeah, a lot of times, actually, I wrote White Paper about the Pennsylvania program about 2 or 3 years ago with Dr. Brian Donner, and we used my canna bot to obtain all the information. So it wasn't like we used Excel or something that could be changed. It was a tool that can be audited from a QA standpoint and our paper went everywhere. They used it in Georgia to legalize their program. The Philippines. It was kind of interesting to watch it just hit everywhere because the program in Pennsylvania, we have a tremendous amount of qualifying conditions, so we're very lucky so that patients can get into it. However, one of the things that I see as a patient, a medical patient, and we're a medical state, we're not recreational, but we have states that are boarding us that are recreational. So it's interesting to watch all that go on around us.
Diana: I find it fascinating. So I worked for a multi-state operator, and we had holdings in Pennsylvania. Ilara Healthcare.
Christina:Yeah.
Diana: Yeah. So they purchased TerrAscend purchased Ilara. I ended up working as a cultivation site here in New Jersey, in my hometown and so I was communicating the outreach. So I did a lot with the Pennsylvania side as well. And in some ways, your system is better.
I like the fact that, especially for medical patients, you guys require pharmacists on staff. I find that critical. I wish New Jersey had adopted that. I realized it's more expenditure for the companies, but honestly, for patient care and for education and rolling out a new system, I found it indispensable having a pharmacist to lean on, ask a question, learn from getting that education as an employee and as someone who was forward facing in the company I thought was outstanding.
I laugh at the terminology. Like, in Pennsylvania, marijuana is legal. In New Jersey. It's illegal. Cannabis is legal. So, like those little nuances. I find it interesting that because you guys are still medical, I'm curious to see what will happen when you go adult use. I hate the word recreational. As a mom. Hate it. I hate it because there's nothing it makes it sound like it's for everyone. No, it's for adults.
Christina: And the thing, too, is that a lot of times, people who are using it, if you want to say recreationally, not medicinally, 9 times out of 10, they're using it because they have anxiety, and it helps them calm down, which thereby means it's medicinal. So it's like we just keep running in circles.
It's interesting that you have experience with Ilara, because I was working with Ilara early on when they first opened their doors, when they sold to TerrAscend. I was working with all the chiefs, and I'm working with them now on the Xylera study because they moved over and joined forces with Zelda. And I had worked with Zelda in my past life, too. So I started working with all these guys 6 years ago, so it's neat to see how it's progressed. And I like the fact that Pennsylvania instituted research automatically, because that's where I come from. So it's like, I've been saying this for 6 years now. What, 7 years? I don't understand why people don't understand why we have to do these things. We don't know what we don't know, so we still prove it.
Diana: We don't know what we don't know, but yet we do know. So I always get asked, like, Diana, would it help with this? Diana, I'm not a doctor. I never claimed to be one, but I always give someone to lean on. I always recommend, like, well, I have a friend who's utilizing it for that. It's back in, like, coming from Poland, we used a lot of herbs. Right?
Christina: Right.
Diana: You didn't run to a pharmacy. You went and you tried an herb and you tried, your throat hurts. My first go to is always lemon and honey. Like, try that first. Do you really have something going on with your throat? Or did you just talk too much like your mother does, you'll know right away? Or is it a gut issue? Exactly. Your gut rules everything.
Christina: I went to, it's interesting. Another thing that we're parallel with, it's really interesting, especially in Pennsylvania, back when I was growing up, we went to a naturopath. She was an MD as well, but she was from Japan and so it was so cool.
I remember this one thing she gave us when we had not to be too graphic and gross, but I remember when we get the stomach bug and we would take something called paragoric and I remember it was just terrible.
And it was in this brown bottle, and it was disgusting, and it was like it burned a hole in your stomach, but it worked. And I remember all these things, like, as a kid and going, there was your medicine outside the little pharmacy door, because she ran her practice outside of her home, like, attached to her home. It was so cool.
Diana: Well, it's funny. I was an exchange student in Japan for 5 weeks, and the way they look at medication as a holistic study, it's funny. I'll share with you I went through 8 cycles of IVF, and towards the end, they said, try acupuncture. And it was funny. I will share with you my IVF doctor, who was not at his wit ends with me, but he really wanted me to succeed. So, Diana, 2 things I'm going to throw into the basket. He goes, I don't know why, but my cycles tend to be bigger and better after Thanksgiving, I want you and Bob to have a Thanksgiving dinner.
So we did. He goes, I don't know if it's turkey. I don't know if it's the sense of community. He goes, I'm just throwing it as a doctor this unscientific research. Right? Try it. So we did that and then go to acupuncture. Tried it as well and I had a baby. So it's just funny. Like, doctors see things to your point about research. There's things we know innately, but because we don't have a paper written up about it and enough subject matter, we can't say it openly. But within the cannabis industry, we're constantly like, hey, try this strain. Because I found that it helps me with this because it is a dosing journey too. Not everything works for everyone else. So we kind of lean in and get experience from what other people have utilized.
Christina: Because everybody's endocannabinoid systems are different and nobody really talks about that part. It's different. Mine is different from yours and unless you're getting your endocannabinoid system tested, you really will never know what cannabinoids are deficient in. So it's really hard. It's like a luck of the draw or whatever when you're in this space because, well, it's just like traditional pharma. Okay, so they came up with some pill to help with antibiotic or whatever, right? Well, not every patient is the same. It's the same thing. Every human is different and so you're saying because you studied this and X amount of people that it works, but you're not always capturing all the side effect profiles. So the patients that had a higher side effect profile aren't being lassoed in.
So that information is not being shared. It's one big vicious cycle.
Diana: Yeah, 100%. And, you know, it's like with anything, people aren't toting the negatives as much as they are the positives. But to me, one of my foundations that I stand on is I try to dispel some of the negative behind this and also normalize it. It took me and it was a slow dial because I was teaching on it.
And then I became a patient because one day, true story, middle of the night, I woke up like, why am I telling other people to use this? And why am I not a patient in the program? And I went and looked online and my primary doctor turned out to be a recommending doctor and never recommended cannabis to me as an alternative for the insomnia I'm experiencing because of perimenopause.
Christina: Yeah.
Diana: And I called him up and I'm like, doc,
Christina: what's up with this?
Diana: I told you what industry I'm working in. Why wouldn't you recommend this to me? Because like most doctors, he's on the down low. Not down low, but he's on the state site, but he's not projecting it loudly and openly because he doesn't have that research. Right.
Christina: I'm a patient, obviously, in Pennsylvania. I have 2 autoimmune diseases and I go to Penn. I go to Penn. So University of Penn is one of those universities that falls in our research chapter here and so whenever I go to see my GP and I go to Penn, they'll look at my stats and I get blood work every quarter, and sometimes more so than if there's something going on, I might sometimes have to do it more. And it's always interesting when we look at the results from the time before and where we are and what I'm feeling, and they always want to say that, well, it's traditional, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, no.
Right there. You see that? Cannabis. Yeah. That's what I take. Okay. And I have all these other things I do. Cannabis isn't the magic bullet. You've got to do other things, too, and live a healthy life as one of them. But that's what helped me. It wasn't all this other crap you guys wanted me to take because I get sick. Ever since I've had my son, I've developed so many allergic reactions. I mean, I had to get tetanus because I don't know what to do about tetanus. god forbid I stepped on a can, right?
Because I can figure out a lot of things. But this I didn't research. So I said, okay, how bad could this be? Fine. It's a shot. Go ahead and shoot me. This one time, I should be okay. I don't remember as a kid or younger worrying about this tetanus issue. So they hit me one time, and I swear to you it happened right before I was going to Charleston in Savannah with my son. It was on a Wednesday. We flew on a Saturday. My whole arm was swollen and red. I had a bull's eye. It looked like I had lime. Where people were asking me if I had monkey pox because it looks like an open store. I don't have monkey pox.
This was called I got a tetanus shot, and I had an extreme reaction.
Diana: Wow.
Christina: I went back to the doctors again because I had to go back to finish my first visit because they make you do these physicals now as part of your insurance to keep you insured and we couldn't get through my physical because I had COVID and I have long hauler syndrome and so we were going through all this, and so he's pissed off at me because I was like, listen man, you knew that I had all these issues. I said this when I called and made my appointment and so when I go back again to finish,
I let them know all of my issues. I literally thought I was having a heart attack. I had pain going across my PEC muscles. I was head swelling, all these things, right? I looked up all the side effects. I had every one but 2 and so I was like, I'd like you to update my records because it was serious.
This was not an adverse. He writes no adverse event. I said that's wrong. That's the wrong terminology. It's serious adverse event. Even though I was not hospitalized, I could have been if it continued down.
I said if I didn't take cannabinoids and put some salve on this. You could still feel the lump a week later. I can still feel it, Diana. I can still feel the lump on the inside. It hurts still. It's been weeks.
Diana: The problem with allergic reaction, what I understand is it can build upon itself. So if you exhibit some kind of rash the first time, the second time can be a little more, it is. And so your doctor should be very mindful that like, oh, she had any sort of reaction. We're not going to unless that's the therapy they're going with right now. They're introducing the reactions in a very small level.
Christina: This is not herd immunity with us here. This is tetanus. This is nonsense. I don't understand what happened. And so now we have it updated on my chart. And so now I know, okay, for my son, when he goes and he gets a tetanus shot, now we know that there's potential. He can have a problem because I had a problem.
So at least we know we could be educated a little bit more about it, unfortunately. And it sucks.
Diana: You know, it's funny. Christina, I'm adopted, and so a lot of these questionnaires ask you, what's family history? What's family history? What's family history? And I'm always like, I'm a clean book, so be cognizant of everything. So I had a really good primary doctor, and he prescribed a mammogram before my time. Why? Because TMI I out myself a lot. I happen to have cystic breasts. So what are you feeling? So let's get a baseline when you're 25 and then go from there, which I thought was brilliant.
Christina: It makes sense to me.
Diana: Exactly. I don't know my family history. I don't know my family history. And at the time, they weren't doing the markers test. So it's just like the preventative is really the way that we're going to keep people healthy and I find, like, cannabis is part of my preventative.
Christina: It really is.
Diana: I tend to micro dose. It allows me to have more energy, which then allows me to exercise more. I'm a yoga instructor. Yeah. So awesome. Yeah, relaxes.
Christina: It takes inflammation out so you can function as a normal human.
Diana: Imagine that. It's funny. I've added myself and now it's to the point where my neighbours know, the surrounding towns know that I am the cannabis lady, the one that's going to talk about it, the ones that's going to promote it and I do it openly.
But I will tell you something really quickly shifted right after we went adult use in New Jersey. We had an event here in my neighbourhood, and I purposely stayed out of it. That a lot of people were consuming cannabis and I kept running. Do you smell my people? My people are here. Do you smell my people?
My people are here. Because it was so stigmatized that no one has done it openly prior except for me and I'd be like, yeah. If you smell it, it's probably me, because no one else is owning up to it, right?
Christina: Of course not.
Diana: I like flower. I like traditional flower. But it's that kind of like, pushing the dial. That is something part of my advocacy in this space.
Christina: That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Diana.
Diana: My pleasure.
Christina: It was such a nice time talking to you today and just talking about all the different things that we have in common, which we always try to do on these shows, is to show that we are the same.
So with that, remember, we are the same. I am Christina DiArcangelo. Thank you for joining us today.