Patient:
Ray Totillo
Age:
43
Condition:
Cancer
Home:
Los Angeles
Using medical cannabis:
Six years [for] medical [purposes]
Why did you start using medical marijuana?
The doctors told me I had laryngitis, [and] after I still had it for a couple more weeks, my doctor told me to get a biopsy. When the test came back a week later my wife and I were in his office when he sat down and said, “Well, I’m afraid you have a small, fast-growing tumor on your voice box, but we may be able to help.”
But after two weeks went by I was told I should make burial plans for myself. There was nothing they can do at all. A week later, though, they were going [to] bombard me with chemotherapy and radiation. I remember what my grandpa went through when he had cancer, so I went to my doctor’s office and told him if I was gonna die, I was going to try to live my way. When I opted out of the chemo and radiation, my wife and my family flipped out, but I remembered the movie Run From the Cure: The Rick Simpson Story I had seen not too long ago. I started making butters, and then I learned how to make hash. When I started medicating with the hash, my body just said, “Fight!” Six months later, my doctor couldn’t believe it . . . when the results came back, I was 100 percent cancer free. Now, I unfortunately cannot breathe through my mouth or nose anymore, so I medicate with a vaporizer through my neck.
What’s the most important issue or problem facing medical marijuana patients in California?
The thing that really makes me lose sleep is how all of us Americans know we were lied to, and we still say it’s ok to sell tobacco and beer at the corner store. I can’t tell you how many people are clueless about cancer and its dangers, but they’ll tell you how bad cannabis is for them—until they speak with me. I tell them it’s safer than children’s aspirin and it saved my life.
What do you say to people who are skeptical about marijuana as medicine? You know, I think that a lot of older people are holding on to the lie that marijuana isn’t medicine because of something a president told them. I ask them if they have ever thought for one second what kind of world we would live in if Harry J. Anslinger had gone after tobacco instead of cannabis?
Our “Profiles in Courage” features are intended to highlight the problems—and solutions—that Southern California’s medical marijuana patients face every day.
