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Medical Cannabis and Cancer, a Call for Compassion.

My wife died in 2011 of metastatic breast cancer, she was 40.  She had all the conventional treatments, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, hormone therapy and surgery.  During this time we discovered she was allergic to morphine. She had 5 operations during this period and doctors tried every pharmaceutical flavour of morphine they had to no avail.  Morphine would make my wife very sick and it did not take the pain away.

In the nearly 5 years we were going through this we kept asking the doctors if there was anything else she could take for the pain and they insisted they were trying everything they could. No one told us cannabis could be used for pain relief.  It got to the point towards the end where we were out of options – conventional medicine had nothing left to offer my wife for her pain.

In desperation I began searching the internet for natural pain relief remedies and that’s when I came across information about cannabis oil. I discussed it with my wife and her GP and my wife decided she would try it.  As her primary care giver this is what I observed during her last days:

She was in alot of pain and very fatigued, she could not get any quality sleep. When she did fall asleep the pain was so bad that it would wake her up 10 – 15 minutes later and this become her cycle.

Being with someone you love as they go through this on an ongoing basis is heart wrenching.  The patient becomes very stressed and unable to relax and there is nothing you can do for them.

When we finally got the cannabis oil and administered it (one capsule a day) there was an tremendous change.  When she fell asleep she would sleep for 2-3 hours before the pain would wake her up again.  No-one could believe it but we all witnessed it.  She became less stressed and was able to relax, she also started to get her appetite back.  Unfortunately she passed away 10 days later.

What I find very difficult to understand is why none of the many doctors, nurses, and specialists we saw in the nearly 5 year period ever mentioned cannabis to us, they all knew my wife did not respond favorably to morphine and I’m fairly certain now that most of them would have known about the potential benefits of cannabis.

My wife was a wonderful person who worked hard and contributed much to our society during her life, she is much loved and is dearly missed by many – medical cannabis should have been an option and I hope in the near future it will be.  Some people are suffering needlessly.

Regards

Craig

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