MY CANNABIS AND CANCER JOURNEY

My cancer journey took me to the edge of science and back again.

How a late-middle-aged schoolteacher ended up buying half a kilo of marijuana

‘That’s a lot of dagga.’ The man regarded me with deep suspicion. I couldn’t blame him. What would a late-middleaged schoolteacher – that’s what I am, and that’s what I look like – want with half a kilo of marijuana?

But when I explained why I needed it, not only did he supply it but he also did so at a very good price. It was one of the first true acts of compassion I’d experienced in a year of being poked and prodded, having my questions and concerns ignored or dismissed, and being given the runaround by the mainstream medical establishment.

None of us expects we’ll have to undergo a ‘cancer journey’. There’s little history of the disease in my family. Although I’ve had cysts, they have always turned out to be innocuous and have either been removed or have gone away on their own. So the lump in my breast was, I was sure, just another one of those. Until the day a colleague asked me to take over her class: she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer and could no longer carry her full workload.

Days later, at a routine GP appointment, I asked if it was worth having a mammogram. It was, my GP said. The mammogram led to a referral to an oncologist – let’s call him Dr X – who confirmed there was cancer in my right breast and in one lymph node. He took a sample for a biopsy.

Before I could properly absorb this feared diagnosis, the tests began: CT scans of my internal organs, blood tests, X-rays and scans of my bones. And after this nightmarish flurry of activity… nothing. It was a cruel three-week wait, during which I phoned Dr X’s rooms every day, before the test results were in.

Diagnosis and prognosis

The tests showed what Dr X had suspected: stage-2 cancer. ‘A cure is possible,’ he said. ‘You need surgery, chemo and radiation.’ The prospect terrified me and the cost was ruinous. Dr X was unsympathetic. His response was what I came to accept as typical: ‘You wanna pay or you wanna die?’

I didn’t think things could get worse, but they did. A colleague of Dr X’s – we’ll call her Dr Y – examined my CT scans and X-rays, and identified a lesion in my skull.

It changed everything. The cancer had metastasised, they told me: I had stage 4 HER2-positive breast cancer. It was terminal.

In about one in five breast cancers the cancer cells have a gene mutation that makes an excess of a protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), which promotes the growth of cancer cells. HER2positive breast cancers tend to be more aggressive. Importantly, experts recommend that every invasive breast cancer

be tested for the presence of HER2 because the results significantly impact treatment decisions. This was to have huge ramifications for my treatment.

I didn’t want to die, so when Drs X and Y – who I came privately to think of as the ‘rock star’ oncologists who swanned around like demigods, their patients’ lives in their all-powerful hands – asked if I wanted to be part of a clinical trial, I naturally said yes. Aside from anything else, the treatment I would receive cost about R30 000 a month. Among other meds, it meant a combination of Herceptin, which interferes with the growth and spread of cancer cells in the body, and Paclitaxel, which stops cancer cells from dividing and multiplying. I would get the treatment once a week for as long as I survived, and every two months I would be put through a battery of tests.

It was a dark, dark time, and I had all the classic side-effects of chemo: nausea, intense fatigue, insomnia, hair loss. But, I thought, it would help me to live. Obviously, it was worth it.

Then, eight months in, a routine test showed that a lymph node was getting bigger. The treatment wasn’t working. I was taken off the trial.

Dealing with dagga

One of my daughters had done extensive research on the use of cannabis in treating cancer, and now that I was off the trial I was free to try my own treatments. This was the only ray of light left to me. The research indicated the use of cannabis oil seemed promising, but it had one big drawback: the volume of oil I would need would set me back about R36 000.

So I decided to make my own. I got hold of a recipe and headed to a local pharmacy to buy the large quantity of solvent the recipe required. ‘What on earth for?’ asked the chemist. I was extracting lavender oil to put in homemade soap, I said. My next ingredient: half a kilogram of good-quality marijuana. And that’s what led me to knock on the door of a man who, I’d been reliably informed, would be able to sell me that quantity.

I made 35ml of concentrated oil and divided it among 10 syringes. At the rate I took it – just a drop or two every night – I reckoned it would last me a year. In total, it cost me R4 000.

While all this was going on behind closed doors at my home, back at the hospital Dr Y was putting me through another round of tests. When these revealed that the lesion in my skull hadn’t changed in more than a year, the oncologists changed their tune: I didn’t have the aggressive cancer after all, and there was limited metastasis. The lesion in my skull, they surmised, was simply the remnant of an old wound.

‘Let’s go for a cure,’ said Dr Y, as if we were in it together (we weren’t).

She recommended a mastectomy followed by a different kind of chemo – Adriamycin, or the ‘red devil’ – and then radiation therapy, which kills cancer cells by damaging their DNA.

The mastectomy and removal of 17 lymph nodes followed immediately. Biopsies confirmed it wasn’t a HER2positive cancer, and there was unusual growth in only two of the lymph nodes. Those eight months of debilitating and expensive treatment had been a waste of time and money. It was truly sobering to reflect that, had I been paying for the treatment, I would be R250 000 out of pocket by now – all for nothing.

I completed four sessions of the ‘red devil’ chemo, after which another bunch of tests showed nothing to worry about in my cancer markers. Although the rock-star oncologists told me I could now ‘consider myself cured’, I opted to have radiation treatment too: I no longer trusted the rock stars and wanted to leave nothing to chance.

Growing my own

Watching my supply of cannabis oil slowly dwindle, I realised I was going to run out. I decided I’d grow my own marijuana. I procured and planted the seeds in my garden, and within a week they’d begun to sprout. The marijuana grew like, well, weeds.

The issue of its legality was a different matter altogether.

First, the plants kept being stolen. Even a quick trip to the shops, an absence of no more than 20 minutes, was long enough for a plant or two to be dug up and spirited away. Eventually, I transplanted the plants into pots so they could easily be moved inside when I had to leave home for some reason.

Second, the weed patch in my garden had attracted the attention of some nasty people. At one stage, a particularly malevolent bunch threatened to report me to the police if I didn’t supply them with marijuana, free of charge, from my crop. I also experienced a rash of break-ins and petty thefts from my home. Despite these hassles, enough plants reached maturity for me to make 25ml of concentrated marijuana oil.

I still take two or three drops each night. Although it’s not entirely plain sailing – I think it makes me a little depressed – there is no doubt it helps my health, if not with treating cancer directly then at least with strengthening my immune system. In fact, from the day I started taking it, during a time when my immune system had been enormously compromised by the toxic treatments, I’ve never got seriously sick. It also helps me get to sleep at night.