Good for you on not taking prescribed painkillers. I've gone through basically the same thing with three crushed vertibrae.
Oxy was the only thing that worked of all the legal hard drugs. Well morphine worked too but you don't want to be on morphine either.
But I kept building up a tolerance to Oxy and it took more and more and really quickly it made me physically addicted. Getting off them was awful, cold turkey withdrawls...
They don't inspect your grow or use the list to keep an eye on you ever. If a cop comes to your house it will be for something else because you did something they found out about.
You renew yearly.
Six FAT FAT HUGE plants put out a lot, and you can have 18 clones or plants in veg getting fat to start flowering. As I interpret things a 6' plant in veg isn't a mature plant so I can have 18 big monsters ready to veg and then mature 6 at a time.
Maybe I'm stretching things, oh well... Once you get here join one of the groups that supports med marijuana and has meetings, there are a few of them now.
Then you can find 3 other people to be a caregiver for. You are allowed to grow for up to 4 people including yourself so 24 mature plants and 72 in veg max at a time. Out of that you'll probably end up giving about 6 oz's per person per yield and the rest is yours so subtract 18oz off of what you can yield off 24 plants.