The cancer drug: Cancer opens one's eyes to the many facets of marijuana

Ahh, cancer. One learns so much from being diagnosed with a death-sentence disease. Of course, 95% of it is stuff you would rather not know, but that other 5% is downright interesting. For example, "America's Next Top Model" is much more fun to watch when you've lost 15 pounds without trying. During chemotherapy, vanilla smells good, but vanilla wafers taste disgusting. And eyelashes really do have a purpose; without them, my eyes are a dust magnet.

But the most compelling fact I learned was about my friends. Not just what you would expect: how they cooked for my family and picked up my kids and took me to doctors and pretended not to notice how bad I looked and, most important, that I could not -- cannot -- survive without them.

No, what really shocked me was how many of my old, dear, married, parenting, job-holding friends smoke pot. I am not kidding. People I never expected dropped by to deliver joints and buds and private stash. The DEA could have set a security cam over my front door and made some serious dents in the marijuana trade. The poets and musicians were not a surprise, but lawyers? CEOs? Republicans? Across the ideological spectrum, a lot of my buddies are stoners. Who knew?

When I surfaced from my chemo haze enough to care about anyone else, I was curious. Why do so many 40- and 50-somethings still get high? I asked my suppliers. Pain was the No. 1 answer. Not just the psychic angst of being mothers and fathers to teenagers, but real physical pain. We're all beginning to fall apart, and for those who imbibe, a couple of tokes really take the edge off the sciatica, rotator cuff injuries, irritable bowel syndrome and migraines.

I have had two doctors tell me that the survival rate of those that believe they are going to survive is much higher than those that accept the terminal diagnosis.

Back in 1997 I was diagnosed in late July at the Cleveland Clinic. I was told there was no chance.. It was inoperable, the tumor was wrapped around my aorta. The standard treatment was Chemo(Cisplatin) and it was their views that would not even prolong my life in my condition. I was told to go home and prepare to die.

My response was to go to the James Cancer Center at Ohio State in Columbus. OH. They told me the same thing.

A week later, in desperation, I went to my local hospital and saw Dr. Ralph Roach who is an Oncologist. He offered the option of an experimental Chemo. He said it had an 85 percent chance of killing me before it killed the cancer and a 15 percent chance of killing the cancer before it killed me. If it did not work I would likely be dead in about 2 months. The decision was 4 months with no chance or perhaps 2 months with a 15 percent chance.

I took the 15 percent chance of the experimental Chemo.. The Dr. prescribed oxycontin ... as much as I wanted, and Zoloft which is an anti depressant.

I never took the pain medicince or anti depressants. I suffered the pain and the terrible side effects of the Chemo. I did not take the anti nausia pills he gave me either.

Nine weeks into the experimental Chemo the tumor was half its original size. After fifteen weeks it was 1/4 its original size. Dr Roach then switched me to the standard treatment of radiation and chemo.

On Christmas Day of 1997 my children helped me out of bed and to the dining room table. I took a sip of coffee and asked them to help me back to bed. A week later I started to feel just a tiny bit better. Until then each day had been worse than the previous day. But ten days after Christmas I could walk with out help.

Nine weeks later the cat scan and blood tests showed I was cancer free.

About 9 years later I ran into a General Surgeon who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer while doing his residency. He was in his late 20s at the time. He too elected for experimental Chemo and survived. When I met him I was 9 years and he was 14 years cancer free.

I told him of my belief that it was my own body and mind that turned the odds from 85/15 against me to more like 15/85 in my favor. I was surprised when he agreed with me. He said not only in his own case, but in hundreds of other cancer patients upon whom he had performed operations, the ones that chose to confront the cancer nearly always survived and those that tried to escape its symptoms nearly always died.

Dr Roach had told me years earlier that in his experience the patients attitude has a great deal to do with survival rates.

It may or may not be true.. But my General Surgeon friend and I are alive and well. While lot of people who tried to escape the symptoms of the disease are dead and buried.

It was five years ago my wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She took a few Chemo treatments,but she kept telling me she just wanted to die in peace. Finally She asked to go to a Hospice where she would be allowed to die. I got her into the best hospice in Columbus Ohio. She died 24 hours later. The pain and suffering was too great for her. She told me she would rather die than take the pain. For her even large does of narcotics did not contain the suffering.

She was diagnosed on Jan. 3rd, 2003 and died on April 12th 2003. I had a lot of trouble understanding her attitude. She had been with me as I fought and defeated cancer. She had seen me win.. yet she chose not to fight. I have never been able to understand that.

My eldest daughter did have an explanation. She said Mom saw what you went through, and to her life was not worth that cost.

I still don't understand. For I know the pain and suffering were bad .. but for me it was like what many women say about child birth.. They don't really remember the pain. I don't either. I just remember the good years that have followed.

My son is a pharmacy student. They have safe drugs that isolate the active ingredients in pot that does everything that pot does only better, but doesn’t get you high. They can’t give it away.

Your son is either misinformed, or something got garbled in communication.

The drug you're refering to is dronabinol, which is sold under the name "Marinol." I encourage you to read the Wikipedia article at the link.

Dronabinol absolutely will get you high, as it is pure THC. Alas, it's not a type of high that anyone really wants to get. Smoked marijuana contains a blend of at least 60 different cannabinoids. This cocktail produces different types of highs depending on the combination of cannabinoids present in the strain of marijuana. Unfortunately, a pure THC high really isn't that pleasant, but that's what you get from Dronabinol.

As an occasional recreational user, I'll tell you that there are different highs from different types of marijuana, and I don't like all of them. They can roughly be broken down into two categories: (1) a physical high, where you feel relaxed, food tastes better, and music sounds better, and (2) a more psychadelic high, with mild hallucinations taking the form of Monty Python cartoons. Long story short, there's no such thing as too much of #1, but there's definitely such a thing too much of #2. Guess which one you get from dronabinol? Right, #2.

The reason that they can't give dronabinol away is that it produces an unpleasant high. More importantly, it's pretty silly to give someone a pill to fight nausea.

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