Help! I'm trying to save my 81 year old dad!

S

SavingDad2016

Well-Known Member
I need help, PLEASE! I have next to NO experience with cannabis... Smoked a bit when I was a teen and a handful of times over the next 25 years. Never really grabbed me, but I have always supported it and never judged anyone for using it, I found that it just wasn't really for ME....perhaps I never stumbled onto the right kind, who knows?
Now, 3 weeks ago, my dad was diagnosed with inoperable esophageal cancer. He also has a spot on his lung and a spot on his liver. He is 81 years old and the doctors have told him there is nothing they can do for him and he is terminal. He has gone from a healthy 160lbs down to 120lbs in a matter of a few months and is so weak, he can barely stand, let alone walk. They inserted a feeding tube about 10 days ago and he has lost even more weight after that procedure. He cannot eat or swallow ANYTHING, not even his own saliva... It just puddles in the back of his throat and he is almost constantly gurgling and coughing it up. As soon as I found out he had cancer, I told him not to let the doctors talk him into chemotherapy and that it would only kill him faster than any cancer would. I also informed him that I wanted to try to treat him with cannabis oil and adjust his body PH so it made it a hostile environment for cancer to live and he was absolutely all for it...he trusts me and knows that I will go to the ends of the earth to help him. Now, I have been doing nothing but reading and researching (when I'm not at work) trying to find the absolute BEST way to begin an aggressive cannabis oil treatment for him specifically. I do not want to screw this up and I really fear I am running out of time. We live in Michigan and I submitted an application to get him a medical marijuana card but, I don't think we have enough time to wait for that paperwork to go through. I feel pretty confident that I can make the RSO myself, and have spent countless hours on this 420 magazine site, trying to figure out and learn as much as I can but I am still kind of clueless about which strains to get to make the best most efficient day and night time oils for my father. And I also want to make SURE I administer it to him properly. His life is literally in MY hands and I cannot screw this up! They are discharging him from the hospital tomorrow, and I can only assume they are sending him home to die. PLEASE, PLEASE somebody with the knowledge I am lacking, PLEASE help me save my Dad! He has been nothing but the best father a girl could ever ask for and ALWAYS put me first and would do anything for me! Even though I am 38 years old now, I am still daddy's girl and owe every bit of my integrity, morals and knowledge to him. He ALWAYS made me feel that I was loved, safe and important. He raised me right and made me his priority. Now, it's time I step up and do my absolute damnedest to return the favor, and show the same dedication to the man that made me the strong independent woman I am today! Please help me!!!
 
Teddy Edwards said:
Hi SavingDad2016. You have come to the best place for help and advice. Here are the key Oil threads, where you'll find many knowledgeable and experienced members who will guide and support you:

How To Make Concentrated Cannabis Oil
Cannabis Oil Dosing Tutorial - Tacking Method
SweetSue's Concentrated Cannabis Oil Study Hall
Concentrated Oil Regimen for Cancer

Good luck and best wishes to you and your father.

:Namaste:
Click to expand...

Thank you SO much for pointing me in the right direction, Teddy! (I have a brother also named Teddy:love:) I have basically been reading these threads you gave me, ever since you replied.:nomo: It seems Cajuncelt is the absolute genius in this department. Man, so much knowledge! I just can't take it all in...I am exhausted and my dad has lost another 2 pounds in the last few days. :( Just hope I can start treating him properly in time.
 
I don't have time right now to offer a proper response, however, do you know what if any medications he's taking, at what times he's taking them, and how he is taking them (I assume through the feeding tube somehow)?

I can hopefully provide a better response later tonight or tomorrow morning my time. I don't have any credentials but I have done a lot of research and some of it may be useful, hopefully it will be useful when I can write a better response...
 
As far as I know, the only medications he is taking right now are: Lovenox blood thinner because he's bedridden, an antibiotic because he has a "skin condition" they have yet to identify and Ambien because he cannot sleep very well with all the gurgling and spitting he has to do. Quite sure he takes all of the medications in the evening or at night. The antibiotics and Ambien are crushed up and put in his feeding tube and the Lovenox is injected into his belly.
 
First of all I will re-iterate that I do not have a lot of experience in this area, I'm not trying to recommend anything in this post but I will provide information that I think is relevant and you may like to consider.

I had a look for information on those medications and didn't find what I wanted. The reason I asked about his medications is that some of the things cajuncelt uses may interact with medications as they inhibit enzymes that metabolise cannabinoids. If those enzymes are affected to any significant degree then any medications metabolised by those enzymes will also be affected and depending on the interaction it could mean an increase or a decrease in the effective dose of those medications. I did find a document suggesting that green tea and ginkgo should be limited/avoided when taking Lovenox which are things you'll see mentioned in cajuncelt's thread.

Anyway, what I'm trying to illustrate is that even though some of these compounds seem innocent enough they can have serious ramifications, just recently they had a story on the news here about someone that had liver failure from taking supplements with green tea extract.

So, with that out of the way, you want to start a cannabis oil treatment. You've asked which strains you should get and that seems to be a common question, however, the answer seems to be much less common. I've seen some recommendations, I've seen people state that Rick Simpson suggested White Widow, I think I found some recommendations from cajuncelt somewhere, but I think you would be best to try and understand what's important for your dad and then select strains that satisfy those needs.

For example, I always see that indica dominant strains tend to be relaxing and make people more sleepy while sativa dominant strains are the opposite (I'm not sure if they give people energy or just don't make them sleepy). If you think more sleep for your dad would be a good thing then you would probably want to use mosttly indica strains, on the other hand if you think he should be more awake during the day and then aim for a good night sleep you would go for mostly sativa strains during the day and mostly indica strains at night. To start with you may want to go with a mostly or purely indica strain with a high THC content and then build on it, that way you start getting cannabinoids in to him straight away and you can then improve the treatment as you go.

To improve the treatment you're going to want to combine different strains with a combination of THC and CBD. I can't tell you what the best ratio of these major cannabinoids would be, I don't believe anyone really knows, but the ratio tends to be 1:1, 3:2, or 2:1 THC:CBD (somewhere between equal amounts THC and CBD up to twice as much THC as CBD). Now I'm sure you'll be able to find strains that satisfy those ratios, however, I would suggest you look at a mixture of strains to achieve the end result. This is because different strains will have different compositions of cannabinoids and terpenoids. You can read up on the entourage effect to find out more about how research suggests these compounds are synergistic.

What I'm trying to say in the above paragraphs is that it's not so much about a single strain "magic bullet" but more about getting a good combination of different cannabinoid and terpenoid profiles aiming for a THC:CBD ratio in the range of 1:1 and 2:1 and from strains generally high in THC, CBD, or both.

Next, the oil. You've said you feel confident you can make the oil, however, I have no idea what the situation is where you are so I'll try to cover all bases as best I can.

The quickest way to get started would be to get CCO and go from there (which I'll get to shortly).

Another way might be to get dried plant material and use it to make a CCO yourself. In this instance there's plenty of information here which Teddy Edwards linked to above. I would use food grade alcohol as a solvent (I believe 190 proof Everclear is the solvent of choice in your are).

Finally, you might be able to get fresh plant material, in which case I would be making an olive oil extraction along the lines of what PsyCro does in this thread. I would suggest reading the whole thread, however, the method I plan to try is summarised in this post.

Without knowing what your situation is, what equipment you have, and what would be best/easiest/cheapest I don't know what you should do, however, I think using olive oil as the solvent has a number of advantages. I would consider it safer than most of the solvents I've seen used, I believe it'll have more terpenoids (particularly when using a pressure cooker) than other methods, it should only extract compounds soluble in oil (or minimally extract compounds that are not soluble in oil), and you'll probably want the cannabinoids and terpenoids in some kind of carrier oil anyway!

So, we have two possiblities, a CCO extract or an olive oil extract.

With CCO there seem to be a few ways to administer it. I've seen threads regarding tacking, however, if your father is having trouble swallowing his saliva then that might cause problems for tacking. I'm not sure, you may like to ask in the dosing/tacking thread Teddy Edwards linked to above. Another method is using suppositories and I've seen conflicting information about how effective this is, however, some people seem to be having success including this method in their protocol. Finally, you can take CCO orally, however, the bioavailability of oral CCO is pretty low. There are ways that claim to improve the bioavailability, however, I haven't seen any test to prove or disprove these claims. Don't get me wrong, at the moment I'm using these methods to hopefully improve bioavailability, I just haven't seen anything to confirm or refute the claims that these methods improve bioavailability.

To improve bioavailability I've seen people refer to the Cannabis Budwig protocol (possible known as the CannaBudwig protocol). This tends to revolve around a combination of cottage cheese, flaxseed oil, lecithin, and CCO. I've read claims that flaxseed oil is made up of the same compounds as our cell walls and that cottage cheese has amino acids with sulfhydryl groups that react with the flaxseed oil to make it water soluble and able to easily enter cells. I've discussed this with someone that is qualified in the field of chemistry and I don't see any reason to believe any of those claims. If flaxseed oil is made up of the same compounds as cell walls then it makes no sense to me as to why you would want to change that through a chemical reaction. I don't see how making it water soluble will help cell penetration, however, I could see it possibly helping with absorption although it would probably be sent to the liver and be metabolised. But all of that is moot as I don't believe there is a chemical reaction taking place and have seen no evidence to believe there is. On top of all of this I've seen references to Tony Dudley and a Facebook group which has now been deleted with a post suggesting this was because there were too many failures using this protocol.

I think to improve bioavilability of the CCO you will at least want to mix it with a carrier oil. Some people suggest flaxseed oil, I chose to use an extra virgin olive oil as I think it's more stable at room temperature (and slightly above room temperature) as it doesn't need to be stored in the fridge, it's very high in oleic acid, and PsyCro uses it in their olive oil extraction. I think other good carrier oils would include grape seed oil and hemp seed oil. In this post I explain a little bit about why I have suggested the oils above (as they should all be high in long-chain triglycerides/fatty acids). Some more posts you may be interested in reading are here, here, and here.

At the moment I'm using a combination of olive oil, lecithin, and CCO, and I've posted the method here. You may have problems with this as you need to use a feeding tube and a capsule may get stuck. Also, I wouldn't be adding small amounts of this mix directly down a feeding tube as it may not make it all the way to the stomach. In your case I would be looking at giving him the contents of one capsule mixed (blended as in a smoothie) in some liquid and use that to administer the dose. You'll want to start slow and as he builds up tolerance increase the dose. I would be aiming to eventually give him doses at least 3x a day, up to 5x a day. I don't know what would be the optimal dose, I don't subscribe to the idea that he needs 1g/day and you could refer to SweetSue's dosing thread for more information there.

I'm pretty certain I saw you refer to nutrition (juicing) and pH. Unfortunately, I don't agree with the idea of an alkaline diet and adjusting our pH, however, the diet is probably high in foods that we should be eating and any positive effects from the diet are due to this rather than changing pH.

You're (unfortunately) in a lucky situation where you don't need to worry about taste (you have to look on the bright side, right?!) so you should be focusing on nutrition. Whether you juice or not you should be looking at the idea of "eating a rainbow every day". The different colours will be indicative of different phytonutrients. This could be via fruit/vegetable juices, blending fruits/vegetables with other liquids to make smoothies, etc. You can incorporate cannabis products in this in the form of cannabis leaves and hemp seeds (I've been led to believe that hemp seeds are particularly nutritious).

You can look in to the site "Reboot with Joe" for some recipes, I believe that celery and parsley are relatively high in apigenin which is something mentioned in cajuncelt's thread and may be good to incorporate in to juices/smoothies. I'm sure you can also find plenty of information by searching for "John Kohler" as he's big on juicing and a raw vegan diet. While I like the idea of a raw vegan diet I would also want to include more proteins and hemp seeds should be a good source, unfortunately I don't know what quantity is required.

Finally, there's couple of things that I have heard but have no experience of myself.

1) People tend to report better results when combining cannabis oil with a good diet (high in raw fruits/vegetables and juices).

2) Some people are reporting good results combining cannabis oil with more traditional treatments. I don't want to go in to it too much as I have no idea how much these treatments would cost and what the implications are.

Hopefully that's a good start and we'll see how you go...
 
fookinel said:
First of all I will re-iterate that I do not have a lot of experience in this area, I'm not trying to recommend anything in this post but I will provide information that I think is relevant and you may like to consider.

I had a look for information on those medications and didn't find what I wanted. The reason I asked about his medications is that some of the things cajuncelt uses may interact with medications as they inhibit enzymes that metabolise cannabinoids. If those enzymes are affected to any significant degree then any medications metabolised by those enzymes will also be affected and depending on the interaction it could mean an increase or a decrease in the effective dose of those medications. I did find a document suggesting that green tea and ginkgo should be limited/avoided when taking Lovenox which are things you'll see mentioned in cajuncelt's thread.

Anyway, what I'm trying to illustrate is that even though some of these compounds seem innocent enough they can have serious ramifications, just recently they had a story on the news here about someone that had liver failure from taking supplements with green tea extract.

So, with that out of the way, you want to start a cannabis oil treatment. You've asked which strains you should get and that seems to be a common question, however, the answer seems to be much less common. I've seen some recommendations, I've seen people state that Rick Simpson suggested White Widow, I think I found some recommendations from cajuncelt somewhere, but I think you would be best to try and understand what's important for your dad and then select strains that satisfy those needs.

For example, I always see that indica dominant strains tend to be relaxing and make people more sleepy while sativa dominant strains are the opposite (I'm not sure if they give people energy or just don't make them sleepy). If you think more sleep for your dad would be a good thing then you would probably want to use mosttly indica strains, on the other hand if you think he should be more awake during the day and then aim for a good night sleep you would go for mostly sativa strains during the day and mostly indica strains at night. To start with you may want to go with a mostly or purely indica strain with a high THC content and then build on it, that way you start getting cannabinoids in to him straight away and you can then improve the treatment as you go.

To improve the treatment you're going to want to combine different strains with a combination of THC and CBD. I can't tell you what the best ratio of these major cannabinoids would be, I don't believe anyone really knows, but the ratio tends to be 1:1, 3:2, or 2:1 THC:CBD (somewhere between equal amounts THC and CBD up to twice as much THC as CBD). Now I'm sure you'll be able to find strains that satisfy those ratios, however, I would suggest you look at a mixture of strains to achieve the end result. This is because different strains will have different compositions of cannabinoids and terpenoids. You can read up on the entourage effect to find out more about how research suggests these compounds are synergistic.

What I'm trying to say in the above paragraphs is that it's not so much about a single strain "magic bullet" but more about getting a good combination of different cannabinoid and terpenoid profiles aiming for a THC:CBD ratio in the range of 1:1 and 2:1 and from strains generally high in THC, CBD, or both.

Next, the oil. You've said you feel confident you can make the oil, however, I have no idea what the situation is where you are so I'll try to cover all bases as best I can.

The quickest way to get started would be to get CCO and go from there (which I'll get to shortly).

Another way might be to get dried plant material and use it to make a CCO yourself. In this instance there's plenty of information here which Teddy Edwards linked to above. I would use food grade alcohol as a solvent (I believe 190 proof Everclear is the solvent of choice in your are).

Finally, you might be able to get fresh plant material, in which case I would be making an olive oil extraction along the lines of what PsyCro does in this thread. I would suggest reading the whole thread, however, the method I plan to try is summarised in this post.

Without knowing what your situation is, what equipment you have, and what would be best/easiest/cheapest I don't know what you should do, however, I think using olive oil as the solvent has a number of advantages. I would consider it safer than most of the solvents I've seen used, I believe it'll have more terpenoids (particularly when using a pressure cooker) than other methods, it should only extract compounds soluble in oil (or minimally extract compounds that are not soluble in oil), and you'll probably want the cannabinoids and terpenoids in some kind of carrier oil anyway!

So, we have two possiblities, a CCO extract or an olive oil extract.

With CCO there seem to be a few ways to administer it. I've seen threads regarding tacking, however, if your father is having trouble swallowing his saliva then that might cause problems for tacking. I'm not sure, you may like to ask in the dosing/tacking thread Teddy Edwards linked to above. Another method is using suppositories and I've seen conflicting information about how effective this is, however, some people seem to be having success including this method in their protocol. Finally, you can take CCO orally, however, the bioavailability of oral CCO is pretty low. There are ways that claim to improve the bioavailability, however, I haven't seen any test to prove or disprove these claims. Don't get me wrong, at the moment I'm using these methods to hopefully improve bioavailability, I just haven't seen anything to confirm or refute the claims that these methods improve bioavailability.

To improve bioavailability I've seen people refer to the Cannabis Budwig protocol (possible known as the CannaBudwig protocol). This tends to revolve around a combination of cottage cheese, flaxseed oil, lecithin, and CCO. I've read claims that flaxseed oil is made up of the same compounds as our cell walls and that cottage cheese has amino acids with sulfhydryl groups that react with the flaxseed oil to make it water soluble and able to easily enter cells. I've discussed this with someone that is qualified in the field of chemistry and I don't see any reason to believe any of those claims. If flaxseed oil is made up of the same compounds as cell walls then it makes no sense to me as to why you would want to change that through a chemical reaction. I don't see how making it water soluble will help cell penetration, however, I could see it possibly helping with absorption although it would probably be sent to the liver and be metabolised. But all of that is moot as I don't believe there is a chemical reaction taking place and have seen no evidence to believe there is. On top of all of this I've seen references to Tony Dudley and a Facebook group which has now been deleted with a post suggesting this was because there were too many failures using this protocol.

I think to improve bioavilability of the CCO you will at least want to mix it with a carrier oil. Some people suggest flaxseed oil, I chose to use an extra virgin olive oil as I think it's more stable at room temperature (and slightly above room temperature) as it doesn't need to be stored in the fridge, it's very high in oleic acid, and PsyCro uses it in their olive oil extraction. I think other good carrier oils would include grape seed oil and hemp seed oil. In this post I explain a little bit about why I have suggested the oils above (as they should all be high in long-chain triglycerides/fatty acids). Some more posts you may be interested in reading are here, here, and here.

At the moment I'm using a combination of olive oil, lecithin, and CCO, and I've posted the method here. You may have problems with this as you need to use a feeding tube and a capsule may get stuck. Also, I wouldn't be adding small amounts of this mix directly down a feeding tube as it may not make it all the way to the stomach. In your case I would be looking at giving him the contents of one capsule mixed (blended as in a smoothie) in some liquid and use that to administer the dose. You'll want to start slow and as he builds up tolerance increase the dose. I would be aiming to eventually give him doses at least 3x a day, up to 5x a day. I don't know what would be the optimal dose, I don't subscribe to the idea that he needs 1g/day and you could refer to SweetSue's dosing thread for more information there.

I'm pretty certain I saw you refer to nutrition (juicing) and pH. Unfortunately, I don't agree with the idea of an alkaline diet and adjusting our pH, however, the diet is probably high in foods that we should be eating and any positive effects from the diet are due to this rather than changing pH.

You're (unfortunately) in a lucky situation where you don't need to worry about taste (you have to look on the bright side, right?!) so you should be focusing on nutrition. Whether you juice or not you should be looking at the idea of "eating a rainbow every day". The different colours will be indicative of different phytonutrients. This could be via fruit/vegetable juices, blending fruits/vegetables with other liquids to make smoothies, etc. You can incorporate cannabis products in this in the form of cannabis leaves and hemp seeds (I've been led to believe that hemp seeds are particularly nutritious).

You can look in to the site "Reboot with Joe" for some recipes, I believe that celery and parsley are relatively high in apigenin which is something mentioned in cajuncelt's thread and may be good to incorporate in to juices/smoothies. I'm sure you can also find plenty of information by searching for "John Kohler" as he's big on juicing and a raw vegan diet. While I like the idea of a raw vegan diet I would also want to include more proteins and hemp seeds should be a good source, unfortunately I don't know what quantity is required.

Finally, there's couple of things that I have heard but have no experience of myself.

1) People tend to report better results when combining cannabis oil with a good diet (high in raw fruits/vegetables and juices).

2) Some people are reporting good results combining cannabis oil with more traditional treatments. I don't want to go in to it too much as I have no idea how much these treatments would cost and what the implications are.

Hopefully that's a good start and we'll see how you go...
Click to expand...

WOW! That was a LOT to take in! lol!
I'll get back to you after I read it 6 or 7 more times, Fookinel.:thumb:

Thank you SO much for taking all that time to give me some good advise and help me out:thanks: Very much appreciated!

Like I said, I'm going to have to re-read that a few times and let everything soak in.

While I got you, I'm wondering if you could tell me if you have any experience with trying to make a batch of CCO or RSO with a little less than a half-ounce?? I'm wanting to do a little test-run making my first batch for my dad, but I'm wanting to do it with some cheaper beginning product, and a smaller amount of it, so that if I screw it up, I'm not out SO much money. Any thoughts, or direction you can point me in? I've been searching on here for what seems like forever and come up with nothing on this particular question. Perhaps I should start a new thread and see if I can get some answers that way??

Thanks again for all your time and effort!!! You rock!:cheer:
 
SavingDad2016 said:
While I got you, I'm wondering if you could tell me if you have any experience with trying to make a batch of CCO or RSO with a little less than a half-ounce?? I'm wanting to do a little test-run making my first batch for my dad, but I'm wanting to do it with some cheaper beginning product, and a smaller amount of it, so that if I screw it up, I'm not out SO much money. Any thoughts, or direction you can point me in? I've been searching on here for what seems like forever and come up with nothing on this particular question. Perhaps I should start a new thread and see if I can get some answers that way??
Click to expand...

I haven't made any CCO myself, I'm still waiting for the plants I'm growing to be ready to flower and harvest. However, I've bookmarked this post as something to try when I can.

I can see you've posted in SweetSue's Study Hall so I'll let those with more experience help you with CCO...
 

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