I am a student in the US and saw an article about what you are doing on CNN. I think this is one of the best things we could do for medicine, and thought I would share my experiences with you.
I was born with an Arterial Venus Malformation (AVM) in my brain. It was not discovered until I was 21 and had a serious car accident. Essentially an AVM is a bomb waiting to go off, it would lead me to have a stroke or aneurism if it did not get removed.
I was told the best way to correct this was to have surgery and physically cut it out, but because I am left handed they were not sure what area of my brain it was located in. The doctors did not want to perform the surgery until they knew it would not affect my speech or language comprehension.
To do this, the part of my brain that contained the AVM was anesthetized, and then objects were placed in front of me and I was asked what they were. I could not name the objects, so surgery was not an option.
The next course of treatment was radiation. I was told that because of the minute amount of radiation that would be used I may have to have several treatments over the span of a few years, meanwhile the AVM could rupture at any moment.
I proceeded to have the radiation, but the thought that I may not live much longer, along with the slow recovery from my car accident made me incredibly depressed. I began smoking cannabis, which relieved me of these thoughts and I began to enjoy life again. My recovery from my car accident began to speed, as I had a new outlook.
I continued to smoke cannabis, and by the next year when the doctors checked to see the progression of my AVM, it had completely disappeared.
I am not sure if it was the positive outlook I began to take, or if the cannabis aided the radiation in killing off the malformation, but it was completely gone.
I don’t know if any of this information will help you in your fight, but I wanted to contribute what I could.
