IN THIS column on December 1 last year I asked if cannabis can help control cancer?

It read: "This is the question posed to me by an ardent but anonymous fan who reads the column.

“My number one fan has sent several medical articles arguing that pot can kill leukaemia cells…so what would you do if an anonymous fan offered to bake you two dozen hash brownies, so you wouldn’t have to smoke it, just lazily munch some of the weed.

“That’s what my number one fan is offering. This person has thought it out. They must remain anonymous and we can have no direct contact.

“So he or she will drop off the cannabis in the tin at a secret location behind a stone in the porch of a CofE church.

“I checked out the views on this with my cancer consultant and the consultant suggested that taking cannabis, as far as he knows, will not retard or interfere with the current drugs I am taking.

“Before avid parishioners in Oxford start to get out their metal detectors and begin to comb around churchyards inch by inch please note I have rejected the offer of a regular supply of cannabis brownies, at least for the time being.”

Things have moved on. Now that cannabis has been approved for medical purposes to control the nausea associated with some diseases and side effects of some drugs, notably for the treatment of epilepsy, my number one fan has stopped arguing that it can kill leukaemia cells and sticks to the lesser benefit of stopping the violent retching induced by chemotherapy.

I’ve written about the brutal effect chemo has had on me with up to five hours of vomiting and about the fact that none of the four anti-nausea pills my doctors have prescribed, works for me.

This week is my chemo week. Then I have three weeks ‘off’ with no chemo until October 4.

By midweek three cookies appeared on my doorstep with an Alice in Wonderland note saying “Eat me for lunch and kill the chemo crunch”.

I have no idea if they were cannabis cookies or not, but I did eat them on the last three days of chemo treatment and I had no retching of any kind after the chemo.

The past seven days were like night and day when I came from black nights of agonising captivity into the sunlit fields of freedom from nausea.

I don’t know if the cookies were cannabis. I don’t have any left to test them. I don’t know who gave them to me.

But if they were cannabis, then I would concur with the Meryl Streep character in the mainstream movie "It’s Complicated” with Streep and Alec Baldwin where she smokes some marijuana after years of only fine wine and said “Oh, my god, I don’t know what they’ve done to pot in the last 20 years, but it rocks!!”

Where do we go from here? I know that the chemo is probably keeping me alive.

I know that my reaction to this treatment is so violent and brutal that I am on the verge of giving up. I really don’t think I can take much more. I’ve found a way to crack this conundrum: to keep taking the poison – chemo – and yet still carry on with the will to live.

If marijuana does the trick, is it worth the risk? Is it legal? Is it harmless? What would you do in this situation? If someone gives you a glimpse of glory, would you turn your back on it?