My son’s voice on the other end of the phone was emotional.
“I need to come home from Orcas Island. The doctor here thinks I have cancer.”
Those are the words a parent never wants to hear. My experience at his side makes the passage of Proposition 2 the medical marijuana initiative, an issue I approach with passion.
The day after the phone call my son was lying in a hospital bed at Huntsman Cancer Institute awaiting tests to determine exactly what was wrong. He got the diagnosis of a young adult onset of acute lymphocytic leukemia. He was 24 years old and had recently graduated from a university in New York. Then spent months in Africa taking a humanitarian project to the University of Kigali in Rwanda to help to heal the strife between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes that left millions dead from genocide in that country.
Directly after his diagnosis was determined, a chemotherapy regime commenced. He was on the brink of living his life, yet instead found himself confined to a hospital bed using his energy to stay alive. Initially it seemed the chemo treatments would involve, at the most, three months time. A resident doctor when questioned thought that sounded right. But when his oncologist finally laid out what was needed in order to treat his cancer, a three and half-year protocol was mandated.
Acute leukemia remains one of the cancers with the best cure rates.
He remains in remission, but to learn at age 24 that it will require the next three and a half years of painful treatments is devastating.
More than once I knew that medical marijuana would have provided relief from the suffering if it had been available.
There are three aspects that would have made a tremendous difference.
1) Medical marijuana could have helped induce an appetite for my son. His taste buds were no longer functioning and he had to force himself to eat.
2) Medical marijuana could have literally picked him up off his bed and created a sense of hope and even joy in his daily routine although he faced long years of continued treatment.
3) Medical marijuana could have been administered to relieve the inflammation in his gastrointestinal system due to the harsh side effects of chemo.
Cancer patients are caught completely unaware when they receive their diagnosis. And so are their families. How many times I wished that I had been diagnosed so that he could go on living the dreams all of his friends were pursuing. Again and again I wanted to elevate his pain.
He met his cancer in an exemplary way. He explained to me one day when I dared to complain and say I hated that he had to be in the hospital, that he was no longer fighting his cancer. Instead he had invited the cancer to teach him what he needed to learn about life. The Huntsman Cancer Institute gave extraordinary care and we are deeply appreciative of this resource.
As I stood by and watched his excruciating suffering I felt I had let my son down. The chemo protocol designed for children inadvertently inflamed his pancreas, causing undue pain. I had to watch as a feeding tube was inserted to bypass his digestive system. His weight dropped precariously. Parents and patients deserve the option of medical marijuana. Everything that heals and everything that could benefit them needs to be on the table.
My son met the demands of his chemo regime with a courage that remains with me. As a parent I urge you to vote for Proposition 2 when you go to the polls in November. You have the chance to offer your children or any other family members their dignity in the midst of cancer. They shouldn’t be made to suffer receiving constrained and thus second-class medical care because they live in Utah.
Carlie Hardy
Carlie Judd Hardy lives in Park City where she is a life coach and writer. She is wild about social justice and hiking in the Wasatch.