By Ray Stern
Craig Rodgers, 36, hopes that smoking and eating marijuana will slow the progression of his brain cancer.
Marijuana keeps Craig Rodgers alive.
Rodgers was on a good career track as a trade-show organizer until 2006, when he was diagnosed with brain cancer. Now he’s a passionate advocate of medical marijuana, lives on government disability, and earns a few extra bucks making candles that look like brains.
He was one of several patients who attended a conference in Tucson last month regarding the use of marijuana in medicine.
Rodgers was fishing in Canada when the first seizure struck. He was rushed from the backcountry to a hospital, but doctors didn’t find the cause until three months later, after another seizure. The diagnosis is seared in his memory.
“Your tumor is here,” his doctor told him while pointing at an x-ray of his head. “You’re going to die.”
Rodgers was given 18 months to live. Surgeons were able to remove about 80 percent of the tumor in 2007 and told him it probably would come back. They also put him on a chemotherapy regimen, which was when he “got involved in cannabis.” He’d tried it a few times in his late teens and early 20s, but this experience was different.
“I took two puffs, and it was incredible,” he says. “It made me feel well.”
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http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2012-05-24/news/marijuana-is-real-medicine-for-a-long-list-of-ills/