My client wanted customer success stories for his marketing efforts. The following was written after interviewing the customer and used with the customer’s permission. The names have been changed for this sample.
We Found a Spot on your Lung
CBD Oil and Cancer
John and Jane Smith were stunned. They were meeting with John’s doctor after a routine appendectomy when he told them, “We found a spot on your lung.” Subsequent tests determined that John had Stage 4 Serious Lung Cancer.
John and his wife, Jane, had only recently moved back to North Idaho to be close to their family and grandkids. An outdoor man all his life, they had just enjoyed a great summer with their family and were making plans for the holidays.
Now everything seemed to just fade away. For John, this wasn’t his first bout with cancer. Back in 2012 he had beat colon cancer, but the fight had left him exhausted through the surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation treatments.
As he told me, “I’m getting too old for this fight, it just takes so much out of you.”
Doctors now felt that the previous colon cancer had spread to his lungs. Surgery was scheduled for the first week of February, 2016. During this surgery doctors removed ½ his lung and about 20 surrounding lymph nodes. Following the lung surgery, he spent a little more than a week in the ICU.
Next came the chemo. Something that John was dreading.
John recalled something his doctor had told him as he was getting his 9th of 10 chemo treatments for the colon cancer back in 2012. “He told me that the next treatment might kill me,” says John. “I couldn’t believe I had to go through this again.” They never did give him the 10th.
Leading up to the lung surgery, John and Jane searched the internet for alternative treatments for cancer. Their search led them to discover CBD oil. Though there have only been a few clinical studies, some initial reports seemed to indicate that CBD oil can help cancer patients.
They discussed these findings with John’s doctors, but his doctors didn’t really have any opinion. They pushed chemo, but didn’t discourage other alternatives, like CBD oil.
Not really sure how to proceed, John spoke with his son, Jim. It turns out that Jim knows knows Rick Doe from Company Name., a leading manufacturer of CBD oil products located in nearby Spokane. The next day Jim called Rick. In just a couple of days the first batch of CBD oil arrived at John and Jane’s doorstep.
John started taking 3 grams of CBD oil daily – one gram under the tongue three times a day. When I asked him what was going through his mind before he started taking the CBD oil, John told me the only thing he was thinking was, “Do I really have to do this three times a day?”
Seems like John hadn’t lost his sense of humor.
Good humor aside, it was a tough spring for John and his family. Reactions to the chemo drugs landed John in the hospital several times. The chemo was taking its toll on John. The treatments had caused fibrosis in the bottom of John’s lungs. This created a lot of congestion, making it difficult to breath and increasing his risk for infections. Finally, his doctors decided to take him off the chemo drugs, turning to radiation.
Even worse, on one of his hospital visits, doctors discovered a spot on his adrenal gland. A biopsy in June confirmed that the cancer had spread there. Luckily John had his family for support during this ordeal. Especially Jane, John’s wife.
“She was my care-giver. She never left my side through every surgery and chemo session. I don’t know how I would have gotten through this without her.”
John religiously kept taking CBD oil three times a day throughout the spring.
A PET scan was scheduled towards the end of June to determine the best course of action for radiation treatments. Doctors also wanted to schedule the next surgery to remove the cancer in the adrenal gland. They decided to wait for the results from the PET scan.
A PET scan involves being injected with a radioactive tracer. Since cancer has a higher metabolic rate than surrounding cells, the tracer tends to concentrate in the cancer cells. In John’s case, the technician also had him drink a dye to help the images show up better in the results. Cancer will show up as hot spots on the PET scan images. And if you’re wondering, according to John, the dye tastes awful.
John and Jane met with the radiologist right before the 4th of July to discuss the test results. John vividly remembers what the doctor said:
“The doctor said – it looks like a miracle to me,’” recounts John. There were no signs of cancer anywhere in John’s body. The spots on his lungs and adrenal gland were gone.
The surgery on his adrenal gland was cancelled.
Radiation was cancelled.
“I can see the light at the end of the tunnel,” says John. Where before John didn’t have the energy to spend time with his grandkids, now it’s coming back and with it all the activities.
“We have 7 grandkids within a 5-mile radius and the oldest is only 10,” tells John. “Grandkids keep you young – between baseball games and going to watch the races every week-end, we are always doing something. We especially love our times together on the lake enjoying our pontoon boat.”
The 4th of July has always been a big celebration for the Smith family. After all, the family has been involved in the fireworks business for many years.
However, I’m thinking this past 4th of July was probably their biggest!
John asked his doctors about his recovery and CBD oil, and the jury is still out. But they did tell him to ‘keep doing whatever it is you’re doing – it’s working.’
“I can honestly say that CBD oil made the difference,” says John. “I would recommend it to anyone