Dancing Girls and...

campfires and midnight kisses! That is what I wanted! I wanted out. Out of this madness, out of the cancer and out of the voodoo world I had been in, all encompassing and surrounding me in an insanity of sickness. It would be nice but marijuana doesn't really do that for you. Mainly I knew if I wasn't going to eat I was going to die. Not to be rude but I hadn't had a crap in over twelve days! There just wasn't anything in there to come out. The tiny bit of food I gave my body it wanted to keep. The synthetic marijuana pills helped a little bit. but they had removed all the "good stuff" from them and they were very expensive. I had absolutely nothing to lose, I was grasping at comfort. I got three "joints" for $20, sat down here and lit one up!

If you are not a smoker it will make you cough. The trick is to get it into your lungs and hold it there. Try a smaller breath but hold it if you can. Three or four puffs later you will get the hang of it and by then you will like it. Now, I don't want to misdirect you or lie to you in any way. Nothing beats bon fires, midnight madness, dancing girls and a fine single malt scotch!

Years and years ago, maybe twenty five, I was given some cookies, chocolate chip with walnuts, my favorite! That is all I knew about them and being the compulsive I am I ate three or four at one go. Twenty minutes later I knew something was very wrong. My head was spinning, the leaves and their trees would not stand still, and just everything was moving slowly.
Another twenty minutes and I remembered my college days, experimenting with marijuana. Then I knew what was in the cookies and knew I should only have had one!
Marijuana has never appealed to me, no drugs have. There is a particular loss of control
that has always been important to me that you lose while taking drugs. I like every 24 hours in a day and marijuana can make them seem like 40 or 16, altering time, surreal to the extreme.
One can sit and stare at a leaf for hours, not really thinking much, maybe feeling more, maybe not, and then this silence gets broken up with uncontrollable laughter! and here is the key part:
then you are hungry!
Pain will go away. I was lucky with my cancer in that I never had much pain except for my right hand which always feels, even today as I type this blog, as if it were stirring a bucket of cut glass. Marijuana will make all that disappear. The medical community and our society have long denied the "clinical trials" that marijuana users have known for a century. It can be fun so it has to be bad! I am still hunting for that doctor that makes chemo from fine brandy!
I really wanted to eat. My doctor wanted me to eat and he was worried. So, I did it and it was all pretty much like the above, a little laughter at nothing really, a lot of lost time, just a pleasant getting lost experience.
The next morning I went to breakfast with a friend! A real breakfast with real food! I had ham and eggs with gravy on the hashbrown potatoes and I ate everything except the toast!

HERE is My OTHER BLOG!

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!

This Pill or Asperagus?

When a person "gets" (like it is a gift!) cancer people from all over the world will send you remedies. Take lots of vitamin D , mega doses of this or that or go on the asparagus diet!
Probably what I found most helpful was a daily dose of laughter. Several people sent me jokes
and just weird silly stuff that I looked forward to every day. Laughter is the best medicine.
Ralph gave me my daily Taoism, always kind-hearted with a gentle persuasion, an encouragement to do the right thing and others posted their beautiful and talented art. I learned we are all in a struggle of some kind and want to survive, express ouselves and be generous as our hearts allow. All things in moderation is probably best, but always leave room for dancing late at night and a great deal of laughter!