Upon arriving home after my first R-CHOP chemotherapy session I ate some soup with bread for dinner along with a glass of water but soon began to feel a little bit nauseous. Not really sure if it was largely psychosomatic or really a quick physical response due to the chemo drugs but considering the horror stories of extreme nausea I had heard about prior I didn't want to take any chances. Although I had some anti-nausea medication prescribed to me (Reglan) I just wanted to be able to relax and go to sleep so I decided to instead eat half of the "medical marijuana brownie" that my friend picked up for me at her dispensary. Although I had been given a referral letter from my oncologist for a medical marijuana card I had not yet had the time to get down and register at one of the local dispensaries. As a side note I should mention that in high school and college I used to smoke marijuana pretty often and had even consumed it in edible forms once or twice, so this was not something completely new to me. I know that when ingesting it the effects are slower in coming on but sometimes more intense when the actually do hit.
So, after eating half of the brownie I decided to lay down and try to sleep. I awoke a while later to a pain in my left arm which I realized was beginning to swell. I felt hardly and effects for the marijuana yet and tried to fall back asleep hoping that the swelling would just go away. Around midnight I was awoken yet again by pain in my left arm and this time the swelling was worse with it being difficult for me to close my left hand all the way. To make matters worse, in addition to my left arm being swollen I now had the added factor of being high! Not just a little buzzed but f**king stoned! I tried to keep the anxiety from taking over and to figure out if things were really bad or I was just panicking. When I tried to get up to got to the bathroom and put some water on my face I fell right over in bed. Again, I tried to see if this was just me being stoned or something else so I sat up very slowly next time. I got so light-headed and tremulous that I once again fell over in bed. Okay, I now knew that although I was f**king high I also had something else going on too. My blood pressure was so low I couldn't make it out to my girlfriend's car (Actually, I couldn't even make it out of the bedroom!). Eventually against all my wishes I had to surrender to her calling 911. The paramedics arrived, carried me out of the house and into the ambulance. I was going to get a midnight ride to the emergency room.
