If your choice is a drug with gnarly side effects or THC, your health care provider might reply like this-

Personal stuff

I can’t let this one go. Wouldn’t have been long ago I would have been, at best, in the “live and let live” camp about THC. In fact I was rumored to be one of 4 in my graduating class at UC Santa Cruz, 1978, who’d not done weed or drugs. Supposedly 3 others, I only knew of 2.

But my wife’s symptoms, both from her Stage IV cancer and the nasty meds she takes for it… heavy duty nausea and pain are now a constant part of her life.

The “lightweight” (relatively safe) drugs like Zofran make a small dent in the suffering. The heavy duty drugs carry nasty side effects including the potential to trigger issues that won’t stop after discontinuing the drug. Some potentially life-shortening.

So yeah, out of desperation we tried THC and using strain-specific edibles we found a few that almost completely eliminated symptoms without making Karen Jacoubowsky feeling high. Relaxed, yes, but not spaced out.

But with a serious health issue you really want to be on the same page as your healthcare team, so you work with them to get their best recommendations and you try to not keep secrets.

The takeaway from the reply above- If traditional pharma can take away your pain but at the expense of serious side effects, possibly even life-shortening, vs the possibility THC might readily relieve the symptoms… the response is going to be, take the nasty drugs and hope for the best, because THC isn’t sanctioned for medical use at the Federal level.

The worst part about all this is that it erodes the trust between patient and caregiver. Cut-and-past cya responses to my wife’s question border on mistreatment.

I’ll add that, in phone calls my wife has had with various doctors, the attitude is a bit more accepting.

Note that we live in California, where THC is legal for both medical and recreational use.

Facebook post (Identical to what’s above); conversation below-

West OLH- we have proof it’s closed. Plus, where did that rain come from???

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

This was a ride that almost didn’t happen. Lots of water on the ground last night, and I was concerned the roads would still be a mess this morning. I texted ex-pilot at 6:59am (33 minutes before we’d normally leave for the Tuesday/Thursday morning ride’

ME: How wet up there?
EX-PILOT: Not bad. I’ll be there.

So the ride was on. Couldn’t have Ex-pilot shaming us if he was going to be out there himself. Besides, I hate trainers.

It’s been a while since I’ve not been the weakest link on a ride; typically it takes me forever to get up to speed and feel OK, usually 20 miles or so. This morning, I was having a bit of fun pretty much the whole way up Kings, even up through the park. Legs felt OK for once! Lungs, no, still got to do something about the lungs, but my wife’s cancer stuff comes first, then I have to deal with a broken front tooth that needs an implant.

Kevin and ex-pilot were mostly riding together while I was doing some hard (a relative term) efforts for a couple minutes at a time, then back off until they’d catch, and repeat. It’s a lot more fun seeing numbers I used to see all the time, even though for just a couple minutes, than ride up at a steady pace with power numbers that are pretty sucky. Seeing the higher numbers gives hope that all is not lost, I could still get stronger again.

Knowing that West Old LaHonda is now closed for repair, we made the pilgrimage to the fence at the upper end, because without photos, no proof, right? There’s no problem riding from the top (Skyline end) down to the fence, since there’s a house that needs access to the road, so the road is navigable and open between Skyline and the fence.

Ex-pilot had the idea we should descend Old LaHonda instead of 84; said he doesn’t enjoy descending 84 when wet. Says the only one of us on a bike with disc brakes this morning! What the heck, do something different, we followed him down Old LaHonda and met up with the unexpected… rain! Rain and 43F isn’t wonderful. All you want to do is get down off the hill and onto flat roads or hills so you can get your engine going again and get warmer. It’s really all about control. I don’t mean control of your bike; I’m talking control of your life, the environment around you. When you’re descending in mucky conditions, your only reasonable choice is to get down off that mountain as quickly as you can.

We made it safely to the bottom, then headed back to the start via Mountain Home, where it was a good thing we weren’t just a minute or two later as some idiot in a delivery vehicle had somehow managed to veer into the side of one of the small bridges, blocking all oncoming traffic and leaving just a couple feet for us to ride past. I’ll get some video up shortly.

Overall, a much better-than-expected ride for me, despite the rain.