Cancer Again?! A Cannabinoid Researcher Speaks Out: Heartbreak & The Return to Oncology
Art Courtesy of Rebekah Jenks
I recently had the privilege of sitting down with the Man… Mike Robinson, whose story hits close to home for me. When I was too young to understand, my own grandfather started his battle with cancer. Like many so often do, he chose standard treatments and procedures. I watched, ignorant of what was going on as he became a shell of a human, and I’d be lying to say it didn’t affect me. The changes were permanent and stayed with him until his death.
With the chance to not only talk with Mike about his first-hand experience in an interview, but also to learn how cannabis came along for the ride, I knew it was a chance worth taking. We started with events leading up to the CT scan in December 2023.
“In late September I started feeling uncomfortable trying to digest foods…. Lethargy hit me in early October”, he began. “That led me to dig into my chart online.” Here he found a diagnosis of Mesenteric Panniculitis from an ER visit early in the year. After receiving steroids, the gut problems cleared up. “Then... my heart sank. [This condition] was almost always associated with Lymphoma, Non-Hodgkin's being the number one."
“Alone in my office, totally afraid and not knowing what to do…What if I was relapsing?”
Photos Courtesy of Mike Robinson
So by December, it was officially too much. Mike’s wife was in agreement, so he went to the hospital. The resulting scans lifted the veil of uncertainty, shining a harsh light on his reality in multitudes of extremely swollen and clustered lymph nodes, suspected neoplasms, a Mesenteric Mass, and the likelihood of a recurrence of non-Hodgkins.
His own daughter Sydney's biological father passed away in 2021 due to complications from cancer. “I had to tell Sydney straight on and include her in all the news.” As the “doer” he is known as, Mike worked late most nights afterwards formulating his own experimental products. His approach was aggressive, but his will to beat this thing…AGAIN, was more aggressive.
From this aggression, he created what he calls “The Ultimate Protocol.'' Plant medicine, mixed with a dash of western medicine, and all within 24 hours of confirmation. “Only 3 days later I was in the middle of a Cancer Treatment Center.” For Mike, this place was all too familiar, and he wasn't ready to hear things like "Recurrence of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma." ‘I'm an expert’, kept running through one ear while 'YOU HAVE CANCER' filtered through the other.
The love of his family had helped him decide to use integrated medicine, so he prepared himself for the initial oncologist visit with that in mind. You see, he had already beat late-stage cancer three times without it. “People read about how I beat 3 late-stage cancers with Cannabis oils and don't realize I had a firm grip on what I was doing.” But this wasn’t time to take risks or play games.
Apparently, death is also one hell of a motivator. “I walked out of my doctor's office with a STAT referral to an Oncologist. My plan was to get out of their care as soon as humanly possible.” “You have Cancer, are three words that nobody is ever prepared to hear”, he continued. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what these specialists intended to make clear to him.
The Oncologist rushed in to talk of Chemotherapy and Radiation. “I had no control and the Oncologist had zero respect for my position in the community”, Mike recalls.
He left that appointment and went straight back to work. He didn’t need to be told “ you're worn out, you need rest, and you just don't feel right”, he explained.
His symptoms worsened, so he went to Palliative Care, where he was offered Opioids to cope with the severe pain. He dug his heels in, wanting no part. This determination sent him again looking for other options across multiple platforms, including social platforms. But wait -
“To my dismay, across all channels, I found myself in figurative 'jail.' I didn't think about setting off a red flag by posting an empty bottle of Norco along with a message about looking for options.” Regardless, he worked tirelessly to relieve any amount of pain and also avoid the dreaded systematic shock.
He was called in to speak with his primary care doctor after that, where he shared with her his journey of championing the cause for opioid freedom. She in return shared the fate of patients that allowed systemic shock. And so, “Quietly, that evening I opened the bottle. Tears ran down my cheeks and my love Anne Mari was at my side. I took them.”
With holidays rapidly approaching, time was running out for Mike to face it, he wasn’t getting better, and something had to change. ‘Mr. Robinson, it's time. Let us help you.’ But his grandkids were coming for Christmas! “I couldn't just mosey off to the hospital while the boys were playing.”
That's when he began using Nano cannabinoids in doses, so large that nobody would even consider it. This came with daily bouts of mania however, resulting from the combo of a Cancer diagnosis and thousands of milligrams of concentrated cannabis. In short, “I didn't want to know I could die.”
In a moment alone, looking at that chart again it began to sink in…again. “I thought about myself as if I was one of my compassion patients...if this was someone else I'd think they have limited time.“ And so it was, the aggression turned to acceptance as the Christmas of 2022 is one he’ll never forget. “I likely took more photos than the prior two."
But Christmas came, Christmas left...
Continued in Part 2!
