During my six months of chemotherapy, I smoked cannabis medicinally. Don’t misunderstand me: For 15 years before that, I smoked weed recreationally. I prided myself on my joint-rolling skills; I rolled them, and still do, in a hand-carved wooden rolling tray that used to belong to my mom. The bottom of that tray has seen over 40 years of cannabis from up and down the West Coast, B.C. to Mexico. It is one of my personal joys to roll up a collection of joints in fancy papers and be the pot fairy when I hit up a party or show.

Throughout my healing process, my hands, and the rest of my body, became more and more useless. Not just weak; my body became distant, a confusing, clumsy jumble of meat that failed me and ached constantly. Friends and family rallied around me. They washed my dishes and clothes, cleaned the cat box, and moved furniture so my home was safer to be in. We (they) kept a food and drug journal, because I could not remember when I had eaten or taken a pill. I think the most loving act was that everyone cooked for me.

Of course, I had no appetite, and the subtlest thing could set off my nausea. How can I explain what the effects of this chemical are like? Food doesn’t make sense? Grape popsicles were salty. Room-temperature water felt like gravy. The aroma of bacon cooking was revolting. I craved pickle juice and drank it straight from the jar.

So before anyone started cooking, we followed a routine: I rolled a joint and together we smoked half. This gave my metabolism 20 or 30 minutes to process the various cannabinoids that would settle in and help me get hungry. And then suddenly, poof! Raging appetite, everything smells great, and best of all, no nausea.

Soon the strength of the chemo began to win out, and I had to admit I couldn’t roll anymore. Truth be told, my sense of taste was so wack by this point I could barely stand the taste of joints anyway. We were also realizing that not just any strain would do.

My loving neighbor brought over a vaporizer, and a massive pile of a strain called Lavender. I tried the buds right away. True to their name, the rich scent of flowers floated up from the plant, and in just a few tokes I found myself in a positive, chatty headspace, my nausea soothed immediately.

These pre-meal rituals eased me out of my chemical fugue of aloneness and into the present tense, forcing me to talk to people, put sentences together, use my brain, get outside my own head.

Anyone who has dealt with a long illness or healing process knows how you can get lost in the days and weeks of constant pain and discomfort and the endless opportunities for negative thinking. Depression is potent during these times, and when something or someone can pull you out of that, even for a half-hour, it’s powerful.

We would smoke and chat, and at some point I would forget. Forget I had cancer. Forget I was bald. Forget I was slowly losing the feeling in my hands and feet, and that it may or may not come back. Forget that most women my age don’t survive this.

Only for a little while, of course. At some point I’d start suddenly wondering ‘Why am I sitting in my pj’s on the couch at 1:30 in the afternoon? Am I late for work?’ Then I’d remember I hadn’t been to work in four months. And I’d laugh, because for just a moment I’d escaped. For about a half-hour, I didn’t have cancer and I wasn’t dying—I was just hanging out with my friend, smoking a bowl, enjoying some lunch in the warm summer air.

stashbox@seattleweekly.com