Marijuana! Yeah baby!

I have always been a big man, strong as an Ox,

moving 100# of steel was never a problem for me. When I began this chemo process I weighed

225 pounds and eight weeks into this twelve week circus I weighed 175 pounds, losing about 5 pounds a week! I lived on one bottle of Ensure, a small cup of tapioca, and a very small bowl of jello. That is less than 500 calories per day and it was all I could do to get that down. I was lucky in that I was never nauseous, but all food was cardboard to me: "spit it out or die"! I had my voodoo doctor worried!

He finally prescribed some synthetic marijuana pills for me, saying I could take five or six of these per day. These pills cost about $20

EACH! and with my insurance they still cost me $100 for a weeks supply, my insurance company paying for the other $600!!! There is no reason on this planet that these should be so expensive, except somewhere someone saw an opportunity to make a profit! Drug Dealers!

If I took five or eight of them a day they worked a little bit, enough that I could, under a lot of pressure, drink an extra bottle of Ensure. My doctor mentioned "medical marijuana"! Maybe that would help?

"Medical Marijuana" is legal in Oregon but you do have to get the prescription and go through a process and become registered. Did I want to go through that whole process and be known? I am sort of a hippy, definitely a drop out, but my experience with drugs is pretty limited to a single malt scotch! I did want to eat! What to do?

Marijuana is so easy to get now, probably easier than a gallon of milk and the local newspaper.

If you have this conversation with your friends, three out of five will know where to get it.

I wouldn't know how to roll a "joint" if my life depended on it (and it may well have!) and my hands were pretty bad by this time as the neuropathy was setting in. I didn't want a "baggie" or "lid" (see, I am learning the lingo!) around my studio, or god forbid, in my house! I talked to a friend who had a friend who knew someone. Really, it was just like that! Carlos, maybe?

And the next day I was given an Altoid box, those cute little minty metal boxes, with three nice and tidy and professionally rolled (tight packed!) marijuana joints inside! I had them!

They stayed in a drawer in my shop for three days. On occasion I would take them out, look at them and smell them, should I? The third night I was alone in my shop. My wife works graveyard shift, so I had the house to myself. I did not want this to be a celebratory, happy, party thing, although, looking BACK on this experience, among friends with laughter and smiles

is the best way to do this! Anyway, I sat right here where I am now, in the office of this shop, in front of this computer and "lit one up"! I will tell you that story tomorrow!