What happened to Compassion - Common Sense - Dignity?
This is my personal story of how I became involved in the medicinal cannabis issue.
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When I was in form 2, Michael, a friend
of my brothers got cancer. He fought it for three or four years, hardly ever able to go to
school, too sick from his treatment. Michael passed away when I was in the fourth or fifth
form, time has blurred my memory when it comes to exact dates, but I can still see a
beaming grin on his countenance in my minds eye. I will always remember Michael; he was a
good kid.
We jump now to 1996; a good friend of
mine was diagnosed with lymphatic leukemia. We had smoked cannabis recreationally, but
when he was diagnosed he stopped smoking both cigarettes and cannabis. He started his
chemotherapy and got very sick. I would visit him on weekends and saw him deteriorate and
waste away, literally. He couldn�t keep any food and very little liquids down as a
result of his treatment. We knew at this time that cancer patients could benefit from
smoking cannabis to control the evil side effects from chemotherapy, but having cancer
deterred him from smoking anything at all. It got to the point where he was so sick it
didn�t really matter if he smoked or not and he decided to try anything to feel even
1% better. He found that when he smoked cannabis he could eat and keep food down,
that�s a 100% improvement in anyone's eyes. I could see with my own eyes that he was
putting on weight and looking more like the man I knew rather than the concentration camp
victim that I likened him to before he resumed smoking cannabis for medicinal reasons.
Witnessing this change week to week, for me, was astonishing to say the least. It
confirmed in my own mind all the hearsay and rumors that id heard for years on the subject
of medicinal cannabis use. As the saying goes �Seeing is believing�. It was very
painful to watch him suffer. As he wasted away physically, so did he spiritually. Once he
started to gain weight and keep his food down his mental attitude improved also, he felt
like he was regaining control over his illness in some small way. Just ask any cancer
patient about the importance of attitude when it comes to fighting this disease and they
will surely tell you that it is of the utmost importance.
Then, just before the forming of the �New Zealand medicinal cannabis club; I had another
friend; she was only 19 at the time, diagnosed with cancer. She moved back home to Thames
while she recovered from her chemotherapy. I remember talking to her one night on the
phone and her dropping the phone and running off to vomit, so sick from what is supposed
to cure her. I told her to try cannabis as a way to stop the nausea but unfortunately she
was unable to do so, the good news is though, that she is in remission at the present
time. But she suffered needlessly while undergoing treatment, something I find abhorrent.
These experiences through life have led
me to the point where when it was suggested to me that a medicinal cannabis club be formed
in Aotearoa, to push for patients to exercise their rights under current legislation, I
thought it a very worthy cause indeed; and one that felt right in my heart to pursue. The
medicinal cannabis club of New Zealand was formed in August 2000; it consists of liked
minded people, dedicated to seeing and end to needless suffering of people who have every
right to self-medicate and alleviate the unnecessary side effects from their treatments,
rather than taking more substances that do a far inferior job than cannabis.
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B Finucane
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