Posted 20 January 2012 - 07:29 PM
Good post SB!
I've been involved with providing concentrates to patient test panels for the last several years, not as much researching the cure, as supporting patients wanting to try cannabis as a cure, so we can see for ourselves.
Our strategy has been to let the patients themselves shout it to the rooftops, in recognition of our lack of medical credentials and the ferocity of the opposition. That and similar strategies appears to be working, as there has been a dramatic increase in OMMP enrollment and public opinion votes suggest a positive shift in our direction.
All of our tests have been anecdotal, but I can share the general information that the patients shared with me. In the cases of cancer and end of life patients, all but one also received other treatment, and all take credit.
That one was skin cancer on the back of a patient who had previously had it removed with chemo and radiation, but it came back. He swore he would die before going through treatment again, and asked to try cannabis oil instead. The tumors were gone within 60 days and have not returned. He didn't go back to the doctor before treatment or afterwards, so the results are anecdotal, but he is telling everyone who will listen about the miracle.
I personally suffer from arthritic pain, for which I take 300mg as needed, up to three times a day. Because I ingest oil, my tolerance is through the roof, and 100mg was the average required for most low tolerance patients. Cannabis doesn't seem to affect the shooting pains, but does make the whiny background pains go away.
As a side benefit, it attenuates my blood pressure. After taking a panoply of BP meds to find one that works without notable side effects, I found Hyzar, which keeps my 160/90 blood pressure down to about 135/75 during the day. Alas, when I take it in the morning, by the next morning when I wake up, my BP is 160/90 until the Hyzar can take effect. Increased dosage makes it hard for me to stand up fast, without starting to black out. I understand that is why there are morning early morning heart attacks than any other time of day.
By taking the Hyzar at bedtime, I wake up with perfect blood pressure in the morning and it stays that way long enough for my cannabis meds to kick in, so that my blood pressure stays down 24/7.
I inherited mild PTSD from growing up with my WWII flack happy father, returning from B17 bombing runs over Germany, while stationed in Scotland. Cannabis reduces my hyper alertness and gives me more patience.
In trials using volunteer patient test panels, all of the pain patients were helped, some a lot, with three notable wins.
One was an amputee who reported the first time ever relief of phantom limb pain and another was a covert spina bifida patient who reported pain relief in her tail bone area for the first time. Both were testing Cannacaps, a mixture of cannabis oil and coconut oil in cornstarch, stuffed in a gel capsule.
Perhaps the most compelling was a patient who had been on 60mg morphine three times a day for eight years and after trying our oil, attended one of our extraction classes and started extracting QWET himself, which he totally weaned himself off of morphine using, within 60 days.
Two years later, he is still morphine free and his personal physician calls him his poster child, in his efforts to sway peers.
Another impressive documented win is a Hepatitis C patient if the final stage, sent home to get his affairs in order, and who approached us to try concentrates.
He was so impressed with the improvement from the HS and HAOO that we supplied, that he too started extracting oil and now a year and a half later has a normal liver function. He also started supplying concentrate to other critical patients, some of whom reported some notable wins, but I have only hearsay details, a couple of which I will share below.
We currently support an female Alzheimer's patient, who had been turned into an emaciated uncommunicative zombie in the care facility she was in, when her daughter, a member of our group, retired early from her job and made her new job caring for her mother in her final days. That was predicted to be less than a year at that point.
She put her mom on cannabis, by blowing smoke in her face, which gave her an appetite and on a healthy diet and under a doctors supervision, weaned her mom off of all other medications except for cannabis in various forms, and an anti seizure med. The seizures are believed by her doctor to be the side effects of one of the previous drugs administered to her.
Three years later ES's mom is not dead, and is actively bustling around babbling happily, and passing out hugs and pecks on the cheek to all us guys when medicated.
When ES waits too long to medicate her mom, she becomes combative, swinging and kicking anyone who tries to thwart her, while yelling help a the top of her lungs. Her personal doctor makes house calls and after seeing the results, is amazed and taking notes. She stated that she wish all of her patients could try cannabis, but alas in her current employment, she can't recommend or openly promote it.
Cancer patients have been a mixed bag and two are now dead. One was a personal friend and nurse with cervical cancer, who tried every cure available, including oil from us and others, but died anyway leaving a 10 year old son.
Another a close friend of one of our group, who had renal cancer. He discussed cannabis with his doctor, after already receiving oil from us, and together they decided it was best used only as needed with the nausea, and as little as possible so as not to possibly interfere with other treatments. He died with most of the oil unused and the test results are moot.
We have a non Hodgkin's lymphoma patient that stopped declining and went into remission using HS and has remained so for longer than a year at this point.
We have a motivated patient who brought us the exact strains that he wanted formulated and extracted, who had his colon sectioned to remove a tumor and is taking the cannabis oil for the cancer in his liver. He is still alive, but has had every other treatment available as well, short of removing part of his liver, so even if he is cured, cannabis won't have clear credit.
We have two renal cancer patients that took cannabis oil post surgery and chemo, to not leave a stone unturned. They didn't like the odds they were given and though they have both so far remained cancer free, that of course means absolutely nothing.
We had a lung cancer patient sent to a hospice and directed to get her affairs in order, who was dramatically improving on cannabis oil, but had a heart attack and died. I could argue that just getting her appetite back and her depression, lifted was enough to explain her improvement, without even approaching whether it affected the lung cancer.
In one case we had a colon cancer patient not have colon cancer when they operated and another to have a dramatically reduced tumor after only 30 days on cannabis oil in both cases. That of course means nothing, because radiologist and oncologists misread films and sometimes tumors just do strange things. Exciting, but not compelling, although the patients are whooping it up to the roof tops!
There were a few others that I only vaguely remember the details of, but were equally as non exciting. While that is the dull news from this my actual experience, I do know a local paraplegic known locally as Bigwheel, who believes his lung cancer was cured by cannabis oil from the Hep C patient above, with no other treatment, and is letting everyone know who will listen.
I also know of another interesting conundrum, where a staunch Christian associate was diagnosed by three different imaging systems, as riddled with cancer in his colon, liver, kidney, and spleen and told to not waste his time with further treatment, or in putting his affairs in order.
He started taking cannabis oil produced by the Hep C fellow above, and when he continued to improve, they took new images and were unable to find any evidence of the cancer in any organs.
A year later he still remains cancer free and is shouting the miracle to the roof tops. From his perspective, he was saved not only by cannabis, but by the group prayer meetings that most intimate friends held for him.
Some of ya'll might ask how I and other patients function on such high dosages and may I relay some sad, sad news? When you ingest concentrates, your tolerance builds fast, and soon you can no longer experience a euphoric high from using cannabis. What I have noticed is that if I continue to dose after having enough to ameliorate my pain, I start to lose short term memory and can reach the point of forgetting the topic of the discussion, every time someone side tracks it.
That leads me to the issue of side effects, and what I've read and am finding with testing, is that strains that have a closer balance between THC and CBD are less discombobulating, even if both levels are high.
We have tried Catalyst, and while it was an improvement, it was a low oil producer, so now we are raising Cannatonic and a high CBD strain gifted to us, without a name. If it works and we can't find out what it is named, we will make something up............
a posse ad esse- From possibility to realization.
Help
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