Welcome to the comments and discussion of the Young Adult Cancer Book Club! We are reading Mom’s Marijuana by Dr. Dan Shapiro! We’d like to extend a HUGE shout out to Dr. Shapiro who has been incredibly wonderful during this process of picking the book and getting them ordered to donate to young adult survivors and caregivers. We have 2 books left so email info@lacunaloft.org if you’re interested in receiving a free copy!
We are just starting so let’s get to it!
pages 1-20.
Dan was 20 in 1987 when he was diagnosed with Stage IIB Hodgins’s disease. He had a friend who had gone through chemotherapy and had prepared him for the nausea and vomiting and suggested that he smoke marijuana to ease those side effects. His mother is very caring and affectionate towards him and is willing to do anything she can through his treatment, even growing marijuana for him despite the risk of being caught and arrested. Reading about his discovery of cancer brought me back to my own diagnosis. I was diagnosed with Stage IIA invasive ductal carcinoma (breast cancer) at a young age of 29. One of the first steps mentioned to Dan was to save his sperm in a sperm bank. The advice came from a woman of another young cancer patient and she made a comment that the doctors will not tell you about fertility. I think that is a major difference between when he was diagnosed 30 years ago and today because I can remember my first appointment with my oncologist and fertility was one of the first topics covered after diagnosis and treatment options. I’m not sure if it is the type of chemotherapy or if the drugs have changed over time but all of the pre-meds before my chemotherapy treatments completely eliminated nausea and vomiting and wasn’t a side effect that I experienced. In Dan’s preparation, his mother bought him a bong and told him to buy his drugs. When seeing how much he was paying for a small amount, she took the seeds and started growing them in her very own garden.
– Jodie O
Join in next Monday for comments and discussion on the next 20 pages of the book!
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Thanks for joining us for pages 1-20 of Mom’s Marijuana by Dr. Dan Shapiro! Join in next Monday for the next 20 pages of the book!
If you’re just joining us, here are some logistics:
The chapters and sections of this book are organized differently than in a book we’ve read together before. So instead of going chapter by chapter, we’ll go about 20 pages at a time each Monday. We’ll use one more Monday to talk about general feelings from the book and anything else you’d like to discuss. Join in, in the comments every week! At the end, we’ll have a book club discussion via video chat! Also, there will probably be spoilers. Read along with us!
How are you enjoying our young adult cancer book club?
