Surviving Brain Cancer in a Precarious World

Part 16: The Best Words I Ever Heard…

When the first day of filming for the BBC came around, I was greeted by just the camerawomen who would be doing the back story before getting the results the following Friday with Poppy Begum. My camera shy parents made sure they were out for this first shoot.

Before she got filming, she was writing down notes of what I had been through and how I had decided to start using cannabis alongside radiotherapy. I made her aware that the hospital staff were expecting the radiotherapy to delay the growth of the tumour but not shrink it in any way.

She then asked if I could be filmed using my cannabis vape pen. To me, this was unusual because it was only 5 pm and I had never used it at any other time than before bed, or around another person, so I had never really experienced getting completely stoned during the day or while interacting with someone.

The way I had always used it up to this point would just send me to sleep and by the time the full psychoactive effects were in full effect I was fast asleep. Because I was using an Indica strain it was perfect for vaping just before bed because it’s a body high rather than a head high.

This meant that I could vape at 8 pm and be asleep just in time for my brains natural peak melatonin secretion which is the hormone responsible for making you feel sleepy and it also happens to be one of the most anti-carcinogenic hormones in the body.

My theory is that if I could use cannabis as a method to get to sleep easy, at the most optimum time for melatonin, I would be benefitting from a double action against cancer where both the cannabinoids and melatonin were working to reduce neuroinflammation.

So once I had vaped cannabis in front of the camera I turned to the window and blew it out as I was told by the camerawomen. Once she finished that shot, I turned to face her and just burst out laughing. It was uncontrollable and embarrassing because it was a ridicules immature giggle fit.

What didn't help is that she started laughing too which only fueled the giggles further. I tried to compose myself as she asked me more questions but the more serious her questions were the funnier I found it so I just could not finish an answer.

Eventually I had managed to make some serious points but because the government of the day were who I had criticised for their unscientific stance on cannabis, these never made the final cut with the BBC which I was expecting given that our national broadcaster claim they have to be impartial even though viewers are constantly noticing that paid government loyalists are often planted in political debate program audiences like BBC Question time.

I was never a big drinker before my diagnosis but on the very rare occasions where I had got really drunk with friends, it felt exactly the same with the psychoactive feeling on cannabis. To me, it felt better though because I was still aware of everything that was happening and I didn't have the sicky bloated feeling or the dizziness that alcohol can cause.

Once she left I just decided to make the most of the experience and see if I could notice some increased creativity by working on some portfolio artwork at the computer. Unlike the sensation of being drunk, I found I was much more able to concentrate on complicated tasks like this. I can certainly attest to colours being more vivid and my thinking was much deeper than usual.

By this time I had been using cannabis every night for over a month and the acute fatigue I felt at the end of radiotherapy was much more under control now. Mostly working from home, I felt it was easy to stay at my desk working and not get distracted right from 6 to 5:30 where I could clock in or clock off online.

As the weather was also now improving I could use my lunch breaks to restart working on my fitness by starting with yoga and then doing some weights. What I noticed when working out was that before when I had never used cannabis, I never experienced the buzz that many people report when exercising, but now I had an abundance of it with every session.

This made me wonder if the culture of prohibition is leading some people to go endocannabinoid deficient where endorphins can be barely noticed during an intense workout.

The fact of the matter is, I had experienced nothing but negative effects when I had used alcohol in the past and certainly couldn't function like I could when high on cannabis. It certainly made it clear to me why the alcohol industry has a history of lobbying hard against cannabis legalization because cannabis is clearly a safer and superior product that unlike cannabis, had a medicinal quality to it.

By Thursday night, we finally got to meet Poppy Begum at my fiancée’s house just after we had a meeting with our wedding photographer. Meeting Poppy was great because I had admired her documentary work from war zones and undercover reporting so it was amazing to see her in the flesh.

The night before I and my family was to go get my MRI results, I could feel my nerves were starting to kick in. We had to be up early so the BBC crew could film us leaving for the hospital, collecting my fiancée from Chester and then going to Clatterbridge for the results.

This time the camera lady was with Poppy Begum and a driver. As she interviewed me I noticed that I wasn’t feeling nervous like I expected I would the night before.

When we left the house it all felt like I had everything under control. I felt genuinely positive that I was going to prove the doctors wrong and get amazing results. I didn’t know at the time if it was adrenaline, the nightly cannabis, the generally improved energy levels or just a combination of them all.

On the Journey to Chester, the camera women from before filmed me from the other seat and asked me to show myself using my CBD oil. In hindsight that CBD product wasn’t the best to use in the documentary because I later found out that it was low purity and had a very poor omega 6 vegetable oil mixed in.

When we arrived at my fiancée’s she was much more nervous than I was because it was the first time she had met anyone from this documentary crew and she was also worried about my MRI results.

On the way to the hospital, she wept with worry for me and I tried my best to reassure her that I had this under control and that it would be ok now. Little moments like that didn’t plant any seeds of doubt in my mind, but I still felt a pain that the situation was causing her upset.

By the time we got to the hospital car park, the documentary crew had to wait outside because the hospital had reversed their permission to let them film in the hospital due to auditors being in that week.

Sitting down in the outpatients waiting room It was me, my Mother, my Father and my Fiancée, just like at the start when I was first told the devastating news that my brain tumour was cancerous. I’m sure it was something that had all crossed our minds because so much had happened since then and this would be the big one where we would find out, what the situation would be post-treatment.

My only worry was that if something was still left, they would pressure me into taking chemo which I was dead against given the lack of evidence for effectiveness against anaplastic astrocytoma’s, the damage it does to the immune system and healthy cells.

When we were finally called in, I sat down with my fiancée next to me holding my hand with my parents by the door. We still had to wait for the oncologist to come through and just that tiny extra waiting depleted my confidence as I felt my heart beat race with adrenaline.

When he did enter, he came over to shake our hands and came to sit down near me. He lifted up his documents and said: “Mr James, these are more than just good scan results here, you have an excellent scan result, there are no signs of disease”. These were the best words I had ever heard.

We all made a huge sigh of relief and then broke down into tears of joy. The feeling of weight being lifted off my shoulders was intense, blissful and a feeling I knew I would never forget. It was just as enjoyable to turn around to my family and see their faces smiling again.

He then explained that I would have another MRI in 3 months just to check everything is ok. When I first met Dr Shenoy and throughout treatment, he remained sceptical of my protocol of using a strict ketogenic diet. My mother asked him if he felt the diet had played a part in this amazing result, to which he replied it may be due to the fact that results like this are rare so soon after diagnosis.

What amazed us all is that it was only a couple of months since we first found out I had a brain tumour and at the very start it was 6 cm in size, a fair amount of still left after surgery. Radiotherapy was expected to just stop the remainder growing for a while. But there I was just a few months after diagnosis, straight into remission.

When we came back to the car park, I reported the news to Poppy and she gave us a big hug. As they were still not allowed to film on the premises, we had to leave to grounds and go to Drayton Motors just outside to see if we could film the disclosure of the results there.

After mum got the ok from the owner, I and my fiancée walked up to Poppy to explain my clear scan result and how good we felt. I was still buzzing with the news and my fiancée still had tears of joy in her eyes.

Once we were back at my Fiancée’s parent’s house, it was the last bit of filming where I explained how wrong it is that cannabis is illegal, preventing many people from getting the same clear scan results that I relieved. The phrase “I would rather be illegally alive than legally dead” from Scotland’s GBM4 survivor Lynn Cameron had never felt so relevant.

To Be Continued…