It was an average night for Vietnam veteran Dennis Wright when he felt severe pain in his abdomen after having a beer with dinner more than 20 years ago. Little did he know that the pain he felt was just the beginning of a vigorous fight with various medical issues.
After years of experiencing inflammation in his large intestine, Dennis had 3 inches of his large intestine removed in 2011 but during the surgery, doctors found something they didn’t expect; a neuroendocrine tumor which had spread and caused him to contract pancreatic, liver and lung cancer. Dennis said it is very common for neuroendocrine tumors to go undetected over time because they grow very slowly.
“Doctors figured because of the tumor’s slow growth rate and because of the size of this thing that was on my pancreas, it could have been growing inside of me for up to 20 years,” he said. “Doctors at the hospital I went to had only seen one other person who had a neuroendocrine tumor. They told me they had never seen such a mass.”
Because his condition was so dire, doctors immediately put Dennis on copious amounts of chemotherapy but because of his high metabolism and the nature of his condition, he believes, the radiation did not do anything for him.
“They gave me a radiation treatment that was 400 drags. Doctors couldn’t believe I was going through it so fast but the problem with my cancer is that the chemo underfeeds it,” he said. “Chemotherapy normally works because the cancer cells grow faster than body cells so we poison everything in hopes that the cancer dies but with mine growing slower, the only possible outcome is that I would die, but doctors put me on it anyway.”
Dennis also said that he became very isolated while going through all of his treatments.
“It was so much radiation that they had to put lead walls up and they couldn’t have anyone in a room on either side of me,” he said.
“When people would come and feed me, I had to go into the bathroom and shut the door and they would slip the food to me under the door. The safety officer who would come in and check on me said he had never seen anything like it. I could seriously sterilize someone if they sat in my lap.”
Like all cancer patients who undergo chemotherapy, Dennis experienced chronic pain. According to his daughter, Jennie, doctors gave him morphine to help with the pain but like the radiation treatment, the morphine did not help.
“We tried telling them that the morphine didn’t work for him but they still did it,” Jennie said. “He would be up walking around but he would still be in a tremendous amount of pain. When they finally realized it wasn’t working they took him off of it but he still had to go through the whole detox process which was terrible.”
Between the morphine detox and other general side effects of chemotherapy, Dennis said he went from 150 pounds to 107 pounds and became so frail that he had to be put into hospice care in Georgia. While things started to look as grim as it had ever been, some hope for recovery came when a friend from Michigan decided to visit him.
“He brought me some hemp oil capsules and it stopped my cancer from growing,” he said. I started with 1 gram, three times per day and eventually I ended up taking that amount every day for three years.”
After coming to this realization, Dennis switched from hemp oil to Rick Simpson Oil (RSO) However, he was not able to stay on the Rick Simpson Oil for long.
“With the amount of RSO I was taking, it was becoming difficult for me to function so I started using cannabidiol (CBD) oil instead of the Simpson oil because I couldn’t afford it in the amount that I would take it in,” he said. “I also wanted to go up on the CBD so I had to get rid of the Rick Simpson Oil,” he added.
Two years ago, Dennis increased his CBD intake from 1 gram, three times per day to a two-milliliter dropper, six times per day. He said he could feel the treatment working within 90 days. Six months later Dennis went back to see his doctor; they were shocked with his test results.
“The cancer in my lung was gone,” he said. “The VA was blown away and the doctors couldn’t believe it,” he said.
Once Dennis realized the medical benefits of cannabis, he also started smoking cannabis regularly to help with PTSD and anxiety that he developed after serving in the army from 1966 to 1969.
“I used to have really bad dreams. Every dream I had was the same situation,” he said. "Something would go bad, I would be laying on my back and feel like I had been shot in the
chest while I was dreaming then I would wake up with a splash and there would be sweat everywhere. It was terrible so I decided to use the oils for the cancer and smoke pot for the PTSD.”

Given all the chaos that Dennis has gone through throughout this journey, he felt he had to find something to take his frustration out on, that’s when his late brother suggested he try skydiving. Today he is a licensed skydiver and has successfully completed 217 jumps.
“I started skydiving 20 years ago, after I was diagnosed with intestinal problems. I fell in love with the sport and I knew there would come a point where I couldn’t endure the pain so, looking at my alternative, I thought to myself ‘I could do this.’ I like to get my parachute out and float in the air as much as possible,” he said.
While cannabis has helped him tremendously, Dennis still suffers from intestinal problems, a lack of appetite and is still fighting pancreatic cancer but Jennie believes that her father will continue to have a positive outlook.
“He’s an optimist, not a pessimist and is always looking toward the future,” she said.
“Outside of the cancer and issues with my intestine, I feel healthy. I expect the cancer in my pancreas will be gone within the next six months,” Dennis added.
In the meantime, Dennis does whatever he can to share his story. He said his story has encouraged his family, friends and strangers on social media to try cannabis oil for themselves.
“I have Facebook friends I’ve never met who decided to try because of my story and I have people tell me they’re still doing the CBD oil that it’s going good and that it’s saving their life and this is just by spreading the word. It’s incredible,” he said.
For those who continue to battle cancer, Dennis said he would advise them to try CBD oil for themselves and take mass quantities if necessary
“If you don’t feel any different after 30 days, up the dosage, you can’t overdose on this stuff,” he said.
Because cannabis has been such an effective treatment for him, he and his wife, Monica, agreed to give it to two of their dogs after they were diagnosed with lung cancer in 2017. While the veterinarians were skeptical of the treatment, Dennis said that he went against their advice and gave both dogs two and a half milliliters of CBD oil, 3 times per day for 60
days; what resulted was astonishing.
“The vets were blown away. They said they had never seen anything like it, Dennis added. “The doctor came out and said, ‘I don’t know what to say or how it happened, but your dogs do not have cancer.’ It was incredible.”
Doctors are still trying to figure out how exactly CBD aides in eliminating cancer cells but due to the results veterinarians found in his dogs, Dennis now believes that CBD can treat cancer not just in humans, but in dogs as well. However, he feels that more research
should be done before it is available to everyone.
“It worked for me and it worked for my dogs without any harmful side effects so I really believe it works,” he said.
Comments