THERE WAS NO RESPONSE TO AN UPDATE REMINDER IN 2015 SO THERE IS NO UPDATE.

Friday, February 4th, 2011 approximately 2:45pm is the day that I first heard the words "You have cancer" in a non-hypothetical sense. I'm sure everyone thinks or has thought about what it would be like to hear those words at some point, it's different when it's for real.

34 years old, husband and father to 3 boys, ages 15, 10, and 2. Diagnosed with Grade 1 Follicular Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma (FNHL). I remember going pretty catatonic upon hearing those words. Staring off into nothing, lost in my own thoughts. I remember leaving the Dr's office and getting some lunch (I had gone to the Dr on my lunch break from work) my wife calling while I was in line and telling her the news, then going back to work. I wasn't there very long before I was told to go home, I was clearly not in a state of mind to work.

I came home, set my now cold lunch on the desk to further be ignored, and started researching my newly discovered condition. This lasted about 10 mins. All initial summaries of fL read the same, "treatable but incurable." I was still in shock and really fixated on the incurable part. Why me? To my knowledge cancer didn't run in my family so why me? Would my 2 year old even get a chance to know who his dad was? It didn't really matter why at that point, cancer doesn't care about any of that, but my own mind and emotions were working against me and wouldn't let it go. My family tried to help, but really, what can you do or say? It's not that their efforts weren't appreciated, there really just wasn't anything to do or say. I would feel comfortable saying it was the worst night of my life.

At the time my wife was working weekends and went in at 6am. The next morning came and my 2 year old son still needed changed, still needed breakfast, in short, life went on. Really it was one of the best things that could have happened. Forcing myself to do these things helped not just sit around and sulk. After the morning chores were done and some coffee had made its way into my system I again went to the computer to do more research.

This time I was a little more clear headed in my approach, I will admit not 100% clear, but certainly better than the previous night. My primary care physician had already issued the referral to an oncologist, so all I really had to do at that point was wait and learn what I could. Reading up on the disease made me realize I wasn't going to die tomorrow, and offered some hope. I was still not real happy about having cancer to say the least, but life was going to go on. Most people with this type have several years to live. It responds very well to treatment, but usually comes back at some point. About 1 in 3 cases mutate to a more aggressive form that can become a problem. Grade 1 fnhl is an indolent blood cancer, meaning its a slow growing type, really the best case in an awful scenario. Most people develop it around 60 and it is pretty rare (but not unheard of) to be diagnosed with it at 34. What my brain read into all this is that I had a long time to live, but was going to have to endure multiple rounds of very expensive and uncomfortable treatments to do so.

First oncology appointment came and by that time I had learned enough about what I was facing to have a pretty good understanding of what I was in for. As far as cancer goes, this is one of the "good" types if there is such a thing. We did the usual stuff you do at first, CT scan, PET scan, monitored my temperature and weight. The PET scan revealed that I had active lymph nodes (tumors) in both sides of my neck, in my groin, and a small one near my stomach. While that news made me stage 3, it was also kind of good. Since we already knew the cancer was in all 4 quadrants of my body we had no reason to do a bone marrow biopsy. This was good since I understand they are very painful. However, being stage 3 meant that targeted radiation therapy was not an option, and my treatment would be chemo. Not having any major organ involvement was keeping me from being stage 4. Given the slow growing nature of the disease and how chemotherapy works we opted to go on watch and wait.

From what I understand, you hope to achieve a good durable remission the first time because the 2nd time will be around 1/2 of what the 1st was, the 3rd about 1/2 the second, and so on until it's not worth doing any more. While having cancer and not doing anything about it was a little hard to wrap my (and especially my family's) head around, I did understand that the longer I could push off the 1st treatment the better off I was.

After 3 months I went back in for a routine appt. The tumors on the right side of my neck had gotten larger, and my temperature was fluctuating from 96-100°F, and I had been having random night sweats. The high temps were not for any extended period of time, and I was verifying the thermometer with one of my kids who's temp stayed stable throughout. It would just jump around seemingly at random, not following a smooth curve if it were to be charted out. These were not really happening with any more frequency than they had been, these were the symptoms that made me go get checked to begin with, so we opted to keep on watch and wait. At this point I asked my Dr for his opinion on when I would likely need my first chemo round. 2-3 years was the response.

During this time I had also been continuing my own research (the kind you really only do when your life depends on it), looking for anything that offered any hope of avoiding chemo, and I kept running across a video by Rick Simpson called "Run From the Cure." I watched the video and while it was amazing that he was claiming to cure cancers (I still don't think "cure" is the right word) with an oil made from high quality cannabis and his testimonials from others were nothing short of amazing, no real proof was ever provided. At this point in time there was quite a lot about medical marijuana and just marijuana laws in general in the news, and I had already been reading about its benefits for someone undergoing traditional cancer therapies. The 3 main side effects from cannabis are "hungry, happy, and sleepy," for someone undergoing chemo or radiation therapies these are very good things since those treatments make you lose your appetite, make you feel like crap and depressed, and do a lot of damage to the body on their own that requires rest to heal from. I had already been a recreational user for years so I started reading up on the subject at a scientific level instead of news service write ups. Pub-Med and the National Cancer Institute web pages provided a great deal of info, and really enough promise in early research to wonder why the compounds found weren't being researched more thoroughly.

The National Cancer Institute says this about cannabinoids:

"Cannabinoids are a group of 21-carbon-containing terpenophenolic compounds produced uniquely by Cannabis species (e.g., Cannabis sativa L.) .[1,2] These plant-derived compounds may be referred to as phytocannabinoids. Although delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the primary psychoactive ingredient, other known compounds with biologic activity are cannabinol, cannabidiol (CBD), cannabichromene, cannabigerol, tetrahydrocannabivarin, and delta-8-THC. CBD, in particular, is thought to have significant analgesic and anti-inflammatory activity without the psychoactive effect (high) of delta-9-THC."

I'm not going to spend a lot of time here about individual published medical studies, a simple web search for "Cannabinoids and Cancer" will turn up what I saw, and a lot more today than there was when my journey started. My list of sources that were there (and a couple worth noting that have come up since) will be provided at the end of this write-up.

My state has a medical cannabis law in place and all following actions occurred under 100% compliance with state law. My primary oncologist signs my state medical cannabis recommendation paperwork. There was no "Doctor Shopping" as it's become known.

In July of 2011 I met through a local medical cannabis forum a person familiar with Rick Simpson's methods of cannabis extraction that offered to help. At the time I was trying to produce enough cannabis to do that process on my own, but after 6 months since initial DX there really was no question that the tumors were getting larger and I really needed to get started on this ASAP if I was going to avoid chemo. The required amounts were much greater than I could achieve with limited space and resources, and really only theoretical knowledge of how to do it. We met soon after and I acquired some cannabis extract.

Before starting in mid July 2011 I took some before pictures of my most visible chain of tumors, scheduled an appt with my oncologist and had a before CT scan performed, then started taking small doses of cannabis extract to start building a tolerance. At first this was not a pleasant experience even for someone used to the effects of cannabis. The dosage is much higher than what you get simply smoking recreationally. It is to a recreational dose what Everclear/Clear Springs/151 rum is to a wine cooler.

For those unfamiliar with terms of typical cannabis dosage I will try to explain. Cannabis when sold on the street usually comes in 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 and 1 ounce increments. An 1/8 of an ounce is 3.5 grams. What a typical recreational dose would be might be .1-.3g. Of that weight most of the cannabinoids are being burned if smoking, so you are really only getting about 10% of the cannabinoids in that .1-.3g.

It takes 1 pound of high-grade cannabis to produce 2 fluid ounces of cannabis extract. 2 fluid ounces should last someone doing what I did about 2 months, so let's run some numbers..

28g to an ounce.
16 ounces to a pound.
28x16= 448
448g/60 days = 7.46666667g

So just shy of 7.5g (a little over a 1/4 ounce) of plant material is required for each 1g extract dose. I believe this has something to do with why despite widespread cannabis use, we haven't picked up on the anticancer (and many other) effects. No one is going to consume that much on a regular basis for recreation.

Despite these incredibly high doses of cannabinoids I never felt like I was in danger. In all recorded history of cannabis use (3-5000 years depending on source) there has never been a recorded case of fatal overdose from cannabis. It took a few months (I had the luxury of time that others don't get) to get my tolerance built up. I spent a lot of time sleeping while I did this. I started with an amount about the size of 1/2 a grain of dry rice, and worked my way up to approximately 1g a day. A lot of people take this in several small doses throughout the day, but that wouldn't work for me. I still had to take care of my family, go to work, all the usual day to day activities with small children. I had to take a single dose at night after everything was done. To really build up quickly I found it best to take as much as my body could take and "feel," and when the effects would start to come on I would take another of the same size and go to sleep. My tolerance was built up largely by sleeping through it, and once it was built up I could take a full 1g pill and not really ever notice any effects. The body will adjust.

After 6 months I was pretty stable and my appointment check-ins went from every 3 to every 6 months. Almost immediately upon taking the cannabis extract my temperature stabilized to 97-98°f and I rarely, if ever, had night sweats. The tumors were similar in size, which was a little discouraging since the stories on the internet at the time mostly talked about having it gone within 6 months, but all the others things that I could monitor were much improved. While the tumors themselves remained mostly unchanged, only the largest chain on the right side of my neck had grown 1-3mm, at least the rest seemed to have stopped growing. This combined with the other benefits made me keep going.

After about a year into taking this extract the tumors started to feel a little different. They were still there, but they did start to feel a little smaller, and I thought I could feel some gaps in the chain developing. This was about the time I started thinking about the type of cancer that I had and maybe since it was supposed to be a slow growing type, maybe it would take longer to get rid of as well, so I continued on. This was also about the time that depression came visiting. While cannabis had never triggered episodes of paranoia or depression in the past, the dose I had been taking for a very long time may have contributed. I could see the amount having potentially different effects, but at this point I had also been living with cancer for a year, and even if it wasn't affecting me physically, it certainly affected me mentally. So was I depressed because of the cannabinoid intake or because I woke up every day thinking about cancer? We'll probably never know for sure, but one seems a lot more plausible than the other to me.

Over the next couple years the tumors actually began to shrink and we found an antidepressant that worked well for me and we just kept going. The 2 and 3 year marks for when I should have had to have chemo came and went, and I was still feeling fine. The tumors at this point were noticeably smaller, but we opted not to do a CT scan for a couple reasons. It wasn't going to tell us anything we didn't already know, they were smaller but still there, and knowing that, there was no reason to take the radiation that my body would receive to do the scan. I rejoiced in the fact that what seemed like milestone goals in the beginning (the 2 and 3 year mark) came and went and I was still doing all the same things that I always had, if anything I was getting more exercise and was more active.

There really isn't much more to say about those 2 years. Progress was slow, but the only other option was doing nothing, so I kept at it. At the appointment in Feb 2014 I could no longer feel the tumors in my neck, but could still feel some small lumps in my groin area so we again held off on the scan.

On Aug 11th 2014 I had the first appointment with my oncologist where I could not feel anything going in. He couldn't either, so it was time for a CT scan to see what was going on inside. I had 10-15 lymph nodes that were enlarged (had tumors) when we first scanned in 2011. From the time I had first felt a little lump on my neck in the shower around June 2010 to July 2011 they had done nothing but grow. From a small "bb" sized lump to the very noticeable chain (photo available) in 13 months. A CT scan at the end of November 2011 had shown very little growth in the most active chain and the remaining tumors unchanged since the July 2011 CT scan, and that was the last time we really knew what was going on inside.

We did a CT scan on Aug 19th 2014 and the results were received on the 20th. No enlarged lymph nodes found, inside looks normal. I am now officially in complete remission. Round 1 complete, I WIN!

So what now? For starters I will drop from 1g a day, to a 1g a month maintenance dose similar to how rituximab works in a traditional chemotherapy maintenance schedule. I wrote this to share with the world my experiences, and add it to the growing list of people with very similar stories. One difference with mine however is that I never underwent a chemotherapy, radiation, or any other traditional treatment. Cannabis extract is really the only thing I've done differently than way too many people that are not as fortunate as I.

The purpose of telling my story is not to offer medical advice. I am not a doctor. No one is saying that you should ignore your doctor's advice. No one is saying smoking pot will cure cancer. I am not cured, but I am in remission, which is exactly where I would be if I had to do chemo, except I didn't have to do chemo.

Round 2 is staying in remission. I really don't know how long I have to remain in remission to be considered "cured," it doesn't really matter. I guess I'm "cured" if it never comes back.

Having goals really helped along the way. It was understood that needing chemo in 2-3 years was an educated guess at best, but it still gave me goals to work towards. Little victories to celebrate along the way. Things to feel good about. Round 1 took 3 years to complete, that seems a worthy goal for round 2.

Hopefully my story can help someone else, or even better yet, be directly involved in changing some laws to allow some real research into the therapeutic effects of cannabinoids to happen. I hope that one day science can identify the individual cannabinoids that seem to be doing this, but until that day I will just keep taking them all.

You can e-mail for more info and if you want Cannabis Oil I can help you get that (crisneke@y7mail.com)

Thank you for reading.

Videos and links that I used:

The science behind it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVVRQK53wYs&feature=youtube_gdata_player
National Cancer Institute. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/cannabis/healthprofessional/page1
Skin Cancer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tghUh4ubbg&feature=YouTube's_gdata_player
Prostate Cancer. http://ricksimpsonhempoil.blogspot.com/2011/03/curing-cancer-with-cannabis-extract.html
Earliest study found. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/1159836/?i=4&from=cannabis%20cancer%201975
RSO (Rick Simpson Oil) Dosage Info. http://www.cureyourowncancer.org/dosage.html
Dr. Gupta's Documentary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqWxys3P_nI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Crisn's e-mail address is: crisneke AT y7mail.com (replace "AT" with "@")

NOTE: Crisn has not updated his story for more than 15 months, so you may not receive any response from him.