MEDICAL MARIJUANA: 420 FROM THE OTHER SIDE

Medical marijuana sounded like a clever joke the first time I’d heard of it.

Medical? Like legal?

Did a smart hippie find a loophole to get high without getting arrested?

What’s next, I figured, the return of cocaine to Coca-cola? Extra morphine in cough syrup?

The benefits of medical marijuana dawned on me after a few threatening events.

In January 2017 I started a course of cancer treatment for a lump on my neck that didn’t go away on it’s own. In fact, it set up camp and refused to leave.

“Get Out,” didn’t work, so I called in reinforcements.

The standard treatment was thirty-five days of radiation spaced out over seven weeks, with the dose of chemo every twenty-one days.

Cancer is funny like that. It won’t leave on its own. The chemo and radiation is a burn-out thing.

The chemo burns fast replicating cells associated with cancer growth in the body. The radiation is a pin point heater directed at one particular spot.

After I finished I found myself in a particular spot. My wife found a picture of my dad and commented on how much we looked alike.

“When was this taken?” she asked. It was about a week before he died.

Now we looked alike? Somewhere in my mind I calculated I had a week to live too. It was a calm calculation on my part. Not so much calm with wife and kids.

What A Cowboy Knows

Before much of anything life changing started, like having a wife and kids, I was a cowboy for an afternoon.

I joined a few guys invited out to a feeder ranch to unload a semi-trailer full of cows. The plan was to get them out of the truck, into stalls, give them some meds, and turn them loose in the field.

Most of the cows walked out on their own. A few had fallen and couldn’t get up. Or wouldn’t get up.

They were called ‘Downers.’

The job was to make them so uncomfortable laying in the truck that they’d get up and move. Cattle prods came with the job. We got them all out that day.

Chemo-Radiation Cancer Downer

After the big burn to cook cancer out of my body without cooking me to death, the other thing started.

Turns out that finishing cancer treatment is not the end of the road. The treatment has a time-lapse quality in that it keeps cooking its way out.

This was the part the nurses called ‘The Nadir.”

Nadir: the lowest point in the fortunes of a person or organization.

I was dropping day by day with less interest in how things would end up. I was done. A week later and I’d be a cancer statistic.

But I didn’t get that week. Instead I got the sort of pep-talk seldom heard in polite company.

According to my family’s observation I was a lying sack of shit refusing to live up to my obligations, like sticking around. They accused me of lying about how much fluid I was drinking, how many protein shakes I was downing.

And they were right. I was lying, just not well enough to fool them.

They came up with a few solutions. Get transported to the hospital, a nursing home, or make a commitment to overcome the bad things going on inside me.

Did my group know their old man. You challenge an old Bulldog and you might get bit. I was ready to bite something after they finished their presentation.

Weed To The Rescue

One side of my neck felt like it had been set on fire. The other side felt like the fire had been beaten out with a track shoe.

Swallowing wasn’t my strong suit. Neither was breathing, but it kept going.

Early in the process a woman who works in the industry, and a friend from my NW Portland days, brought over a supply of medical marijuana brownies she made of other patients.

I thanked her and tossed them in the freezer. Medical marijuana? Sure thing, stoner.

Faced with medical eviction I said, “One of you jackasses bring me a cup of tea, and the other one dig in the garage freezer and bring me a brownie.”

Not a popular move.

“We try to help and the first thing you think of is weed?”

“Yes.”

Since the other options were hospital or nursing home, why not give it a try before leaving?

In my normal state of fitness I could swallow ten vitamin pills at once without choking.

My screwed up neck took about two hours to nibble down a small brownie, with sips of tea.

Medical Marijuana Was Medicinal

What happened felt semi-miraculous.

I met the challenge and turned the corner with brownie power. Instead of getting institutionalized and facing the problems inherent in being admitted, I shifted gears.

The pain and suffering didn’t go anywhere, but my attitude changed. I could see beyond the bad things. Maybe I had more than a week left to live. I wanted more than a week.

Soon enough I wanted more protein shakes, more nutrition, more distance from the edge.

I regretted going at it hardcore with no stomach feeding tube that would leave a second belly button. Since I had a bottle of liquid oxy, and a big prescription of oxy pills, I could have gone that way.

A one-time dose of each supported my decision to avoid hard drugs with a soft-sell.

My 420 moment came at the right time and kept me in the right place.

The next time you hear someone disparage medical marijuana as worthless, it’s not. It does’t cure cancer, but something about it makes the situation more tolerable.

I was a doubter proven wrong.

If you know someone in the throes of cancer treatment and cancer recovery, give them a little talk.