Hi Nobby
I read your post with interest as my situation sort of reflects yours - you are finding the cannabis treatment isn't working sufficiently well for you and are considering (?) chemo, but with some misgivings; I am on chemo (had it today, in fact) and am pretty sure it will not be effective in the long term, so am looking at cannabis as a curative agent in its own right but also as an aid to chemo while I continue to receive it.
I will say of chemo - yes, it is damaging, it has short term and potentially long term side effects (which CBDa oil seems to be amazingly good at controlling), but with modern protocols it is not as unpleasant to experience as it used to be, I think, and it does knock back cancer sufficiently to get you back in control, even though this is offset by the increased likelihood of the cancer's return. It buys you time. It has bought me the time I need to try cannabis; without it my cancer would have over-run my body by now.
What you have been offered doesn't seem too bad. The choice has to be yours, but if you think the cancer is winning, I personally would go for it, if only in the short term, seeing it as backing up a possibly revised cannabis strategy.
I'm too new to cannabis to give advice in that respect - I am very much a beginner - but if suppositories are not doing the trick would under the tongue be better? And (I am interested in this for my own sake) how do you measure the actual strength of your oils? I know you can buy test kits - do you use these? If so, do they work? If not, are you just doing the maths from what the plants ought to produce?
And is your 835mg the active ingredient or (as I read it) the whole oil of which only a percentage is active?
Hope you beat this, Nobby.
To put my views on chemo in perspective, it brought my CA 125 down to around the 200s, where it has stubbornly stuck; hence my dissatisfaction with this as a long-term treatment - BUT it brought it down from - wait for it - 4000, in only 4 sessions, one session a month.
I had carboplatin and paclitaxel, but my cancer is now definitely resistant to platinum and therefore to carboplatin, and possibly to paclitaxel too; we find out in 3 weeks. So the decline begins. But you could argue that the stuff has done it's job in getting me this far. Though you have been offered a different drug, the side effects look similar - these haven't been bad for me.
I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will be along to help soon. I would also say that I have been advised by 3 different people on here to contact Aunt Zelda's, where a doctor can give you a tailored protocol. I have just had my consultation today - $300 - but money well spent, I think.
Hope all goes well.