The Leaf THE LEAF Sept-Oct 17 | Page 7

Personal Story: - Hello, My Name is Craig Goodwin, and I have been asked to give my testimony about medical Cannabis and how it has saved my life and changed my life. First of all I would like to thank everyone for making this huge effort to come down to Canberra to help bring change to these ridiculous laws we have been suffering for 70 years and still are being persecuted by today, especially the medical patients who were told over 12 months ago that they would be accessing medicine by now. Well my story is much the same as most of the patients who choose cannabis as their preferred choice of medication. I was diagnosed with Hepatocellular cancer of the liver in late 2012 and given a prognosis of terminal and maybe 2 years left to live, as you can imagine this scared the heck out of me, I am a married man with 4 beautiful children and I knew that I had to try anything to stay alive, my wife Rachel and I decided to do some research and see what if any treatments we could find, we typed in cures for cancer on google and with our amazement up popped page after page of information about Cannabis curing cancer, we thought what? Cannabis cured cancer? So we started reading, my wife is an environmental Biologist and knows how to research and gather information, within a few pages of reading and watching a few testimonies by terminal cancer patients we decided that this was the course we would take, after all the medical fraternity had offered me no hope but a plant even though illegal offered me my best hope, By this time, I was getting sick and weaker all the time. My wife started growing cannabis to help save my life or at least help me be comfortable. My Doctor got me onto a drug trial for Terminal liver cancer patients in NSW, there were 10 people in NSW chosen to do this trial, it consisted of chemotherapy, radiation and a course of 36 tablets a day for up to 40 weeks, At the time of starting this treatment we had already grown enough cannabis to start making oil, so I started to ingest cannabis oil about a week before I started the drug trial. I told my Doctors that I was taking cannabis oil for cancer and also asked them about the endocannabinoid system to which they just stared at me blankly so they knew absolutely nothing about it. Wow what hope did I have if these doctors that were treating me knew nothing about the endocannabinoid system, They preferred I didn't take oil while doing treatment, after starting the drug trial I went downhill fast, I was losing my hair, I lost 25 kilo in weight my teeth were falling out and the burns to my arms and back were horrendous, At the same time, I was consuming up to 5 grams of oil a day as well as juicing and smoking cannabis, After 8 weeks of treatment I did scans and the test that you do with cancer and to everyone's surprise my cancer was gone. I stayed in treatment for 20 weeks when they decided the pharmaceutical meds were making me so sick they nearly killed me so they stopped treatment, I found out later that out of 10 people I was the only survivor of treatment and not only survived I was 100% clear of cancer and my liver was repairing at a rate my hepatic specialist had never seen, It's nearly 5 years and I'm still 100% cancer free.