Joy Smith, a 52-year-old cancer sufferer, claims cannabis oil ‘cured’ her terminal cancer.
The mum from Coventry, West Mids, was diagnosed with incurable stomach and bowel cancer in August 2016.
After being told by her doctors she only had six weeks to live, she reluctantly started taking cannabis oil in a desperate attempt for a solution.
She takes the nutritional supplement cannabidiol which contains THC, a substance that makes the users ‘high’ and is illegal in the UK.
But after a two-year rollercoaster ride, Joy was given the best news of her life on Monday morning: her cancer has disappeared and she would no longer need to undergo chemotherapy.
“I went to see my consultant and she said that there was nothing left to see,” she said.
“I am going to party for the rest of my life. I have got to be the only person in the world to have survived this,” she added.
“I keep pinching myself to see if this is real. I am being monitored every three months, but other than that I have no more treatment planned.”
Her doctors describe her as ‘the luckiest woman in the world’.
They can’t explain why her scans show that only a small trace of her disease is left in her stomach. Due to the success she’s experienced so far, Joy is confident even that will disappear with continued use of her magic drug.
Right when she was first diagnosed in 2016, Joy was told chemotherapy would give her a longer lease on life. She started having the treatment every two weeks for three days, but had to have the line that delivered her chemotherapy taken out after she developed sepsis.
Behind her back, Joy’s friends were doing their own research on alternative cures for her illness, when out of nowhere she was handed a cannabis-based tablet.
She said: “I didn’t want to take it at first; I didn’t know what it was.”
“Afterwards I felt drunk, all the nurses were looking at me and I was trying to act normal. I couldn’t speak, my words just slurred out.”
But after doing her own research, she discovered that cannabis oil proved effective for others who also suffered from the same disease.
Convinced, she began taking the pills regularly. That’s when she started seeing results.
“I was taking it on and off. But when I’d been having it three-to-five times a week, the scans were getting better and then when I stopped taking it the scans showed no change,” she explained.
“At first I was only taking a tiny drop the size of about half a grain of rice.”
Describing her miraculous recovery, she said: “I am just so happy. This is all down to the cannabis oil. I shouldn’t be here, but I am.”
“It’s impossible, but I’ve beaten science. My friends kept saying if anyone was going to beat it, it would be me, and I did – I’m still here.”
Joy is now set on making sure other people get the treatment they need.
“People are starting learn more about it now, it’s what’s keeping me here. When people are dying something needs to be done,” she said. “I want to do everything I can to get it legalised for medicinal purposes in the UK.”
She’s writing a book about her journey in the hopes of getting THC legalised. “I believe my reason for being here is to help everyone else. Unless you have been faced with death you don’t know.”