  医療カナビス |
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Suddenly, without warning, a person is told that they are chronically, or even worse, terminally, ill. Your whole world collapses. First, there is a feeling of defeat and then of fear because people with the disease are often not aware of what lies in store for them. Then there is anger, desperation, incomprehension, deep sorrow and sometimes hope. Vour life is turned upside down. And those who care about you are just as devastated. "When you are sitting comfortably in a leather chair with a cigar in one hand and a glass of brandy in the other, discussing death is easy. But when someone is holding a shotgun to your head, you think differently." This quotation is from the well-known Dutch cabaret artist, Freek De Jonge. Of course, we know for sure that we will all die eventually; the only thing we don't know is when. Generally, terminally ill patients don't know when they will die either, but they know that death is peering over their shoulder. Suppressing this thought is not an easy task. After having had such devastating news, you are left with hardly any time to deal with this information before you get thrown into the next stage: treatment. Despite the fact that one is in capable hands, at least one assumes so, the treatment generally tends to make the patient feel even more ill. The medicines that you have to use are so strong and toxic that they literally and figuratively knock you out, so that you are lying in bed and barely aware of the world around you. The ill person is in terrible pain, feels nauseous, cannot eat, cannot sleep, suffers from constipation and feels depressed, aggressive, sad and afraid of the things that are happening and of not knowing what is ahead. I hope with all my heart that every person who is faced with such news will have someone to offer support. Being alone under such circumstances is very lonely. The friends and family of the ill person have not asked for this disease either. You go along with the patient to the hospital for every check-up. When they are admitted to hospital, you try to visit as often as possible. You are emotionally involved with everything. You have to stand by and watch how the person you care about has to suffer an you can't do anything about it. Talking, offering a shoulder to lean on and lending an ear seems to be all you can do. You stand there help less, watching the one you love suer, slowly deteriorate and weaken. The sick person can do less and less and their household chores have to be taken over by someone else. Cleaning the house, shopping, doing the laundry, getting medicines and many other things that are necessary to keep things going. When you read the stories in this book and see that cannabis is an effective medicine, without side effects, and that it improves the quality of life for so many people, then you might well ask who in God's name has the right to keep people from using it? Why let a fellow human being suffer needlessly? How can people sleep peacefully if they prosecute and even lock up terminally ill patients? Hiding behind the law is inhuman and childish. Even murderers sometimes plead extenuating circumstances. Why is there no mitigation for people that are ill, for those who suffer? Did they choose to have this disease? Did they ask to take expensive chemical rubbish that is often ineffective and/or has unpleasant side effects? Wake up, open your eyes, look around you and see that cannabis works! Let people use medicines according to their own choice, so long as they are not harming anyone with it. Put people first, then the law. Hendrik Geels |
