I was introduced to cannabis therapy four hours after I was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer.

My sister helped educate me on the high CBD (non THC) oils I needed and I immediately applied for my card so I could begin introducing high THC into the equation.  In studies from Spain and Israel, high CBD and high THC that is ingested has been shown to cannibalize the tumors.   With four tumors I was ready to do whatever it took to get rid of them.

After my first round of chemo, my tumor markers had dropped from 5347 – what they were when I started– to 457.   My doctor at MD Anderson had said he’d never such a dramatic drop after three doses.   After my second round, my tumor markers dropped to fifty-one.  My doctor said they would begin to rise because they had dropped so much.   After my third round of chemo, the tumor markers had dropped to sixteen and scans showed the tumors themselves had shrunk by fifty percent.   They also dropped the amount of chemo I was taking to every other week, versus the three weeks on and one week off they had me on in the beginning.   After my fourth round of chemo, my tumor markers are still in the normal range –   anything under forty is considered normal.

It is so much more than getting stoned in college.

There are many strains that can alleviate so many symptoms.   For me, I knew it would help with appetite.   They gave me a prescription for something to make me hungry, but anything OG made me very hungry – no prescriptions.

The only things I’m taking for the cancer is cannabis and chemo.

What do you have to lose?   Honestly, that’s what it boils down to.  If you are so against cannabis that you can’t see the medical benefits, then stay miserable.   Stay uncomfortable and stay in pain.   This is so much safer than anything your doctor will prescribe you.   This will not harm your liver.  Our systems are filled with cannabinoid receptors – guess what attaches to those receptors?   Cannabis!   This is not some chemically cooked up drug making stocks skyrocket, it’s a plant and a flower, and our bodies are made to use it.  Anything else is a lie.

It’s interesting the number of people who have contacted me privately to ask about CBD oils. Once they discover you can get the CBD without the THC, they have a different take on it.

I still have others who don’t want to discuss it at all.   My doctor is amazed, but has federally funded research grants – so this brilliant doctor can’t study something that he’s seeing work.   For the first three months of treatment, they kept asking me if I was on Marinol.   I told them no and said I was on Cannabis.  Each time was a question about Marinol and they would cross it off and write in Cannabis.   Finally when I said – this is dumb, I have a card and this is what I’m on.  Either get it right or don’t include it at all.   Now they ask if I’m still on cannabis.   As I’ve told them, I will never not be on cannabis.

I don’t know how long I’ve got, but I know it will be longer if I keep taking nature’s cancer drug.  Cannabis.

I love to garden, have dinner parties, enjoy friends and family, read, golf and travel.   With the diagnosis – I had to get real, so I no longer drink alcohol, eat red meat, cut back on sugar, juice daily, and try to be grateful for what I have.

When asked what quality I love about myself, I’d have to say my grit–my ability to not give up, but to keep pushing forward.  To not believe what a few doctors said to me and to have instead decided I was the only one who would decide my fate, and I choose to fight with everything and anything I can find.