We recently connected with Nikki Lawley and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Nikki, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
My resilience has been tested during this journey of going from healthcare provider, a nurse to becoming a patient to now an advocate. I didn’t choose this journey. It chose me . I am grateful for it though because it has taught me so much ! I almost took my life due to a fluke accident that caused me to suffer a traumatic brain injury while working as a pediatric nurse. Just doing my job like any other day. People ask me how I do it , I let them know I didn’t have a choice.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
It was just a routine vaccination. As a pediatric nurse, Nikki Lawley had done more than she could count, including with kids like this one, who really didn’t want the shot. But the child turned combative and suddenly headbutted her, snapping her head back against the wall. She didn’t realize it immediately, but the double impact and whiplash would change her life. She’d just sustained a serious traumatic brain injury and now had cervical instability. Headaches, memory loss, insomnia, mood disturbance, anxiety and depression took control of her life.
Even though she was a medical professional, getting a diagnosis and appropriate care was a battle. She was no longer a nurse; she was a woman with invisible injuries facing off with a series of skeptical physicians. Because the injury occurred on the job, she was also caught between New York state’s workers’ compensation and her private insurance company. Her insurance wouldn’t pay for anything to do with it, and workers’ comp had many restrictions on what it would cover. She cycled through more than 50 different medications, many with side effects more serious than the symptoms of her injury. But workers’ comp refused to pay for any alternative treatments, forcing Nikki to tap into her life savings.
Within three short months, Nikki was at her wits’ end. The side effects of the medications were excruciating, the battles with medical professionals were exhausting and humiliating, and the loss of her sense of self and her ability to work left her with no purpose in life.
“I was suicidal,” she says.
Her struggle was obvious to those who cared about her. In an attempt to lift her spirits, her husband booked the two of them a trip to a favorite place: Las Vegas.
She was in no real shape to travel, but couldn’t say no to a loving gesture. Once they got to the hotel, she couldn’t leave the room. After trying and failing to convince her to try doing something fun, her husband went for a walk, and Nikki found herself on the balcony, seven stories up, frightened but making a plan to end it. As she looked down at the street below, a billboard truck rolled by that said “Get your Nevada medical marijuana card here today.”
In nursing school, Nikki had learned nothing about the endocannabinoid system or cannabis, and like many medical professionals did not consider cannabis to be medicine. Having exhausted every pharmaceutical treatment possible and every alternative treatment she could find and afford, she was out of options. The billboard truck rolled by again. Nikki made a decision.
She got her Nevada card and went to a dispensary.
“The budtender was a young guy who was really caring and took the time to talk to me about all the options – lozenges, tinctures, everything,” Nikki says. “I tried them all, but only smoked indica-dominant flower helped.”
Cannabis got Nikki off the ledge – figuratively and literally – but when she got back to New York from Las Vegas, she discovered she was not allowed access to the type of medicine that helped her.
“In 2017, New York did not allow smokeable cannabis and capped the amount of THC,” Nikki recalls. “And chronic pain wasn’t on the list of qualifying conditions.”
The limits on New York’s medical cannabis program forced Nikki to travel regularly from Buffalo, NY to stay with friends in Ontario, Canada, where she could get legal access to the types of cannabis medicine that alleviate her pain and TBI symptoms. The pandemic restrictions stopped her ability to travel, forcing her to consider moving to somewhere with less restrictive rules. Last week, New York finally made smokeable flower legal for patients in the state, thanks to the tireless efforts of activists such as Nikki who worked for years to educate lawmakers and the public.
“I am excited to see the medical program expansion include smokable whole plant medicine!” Nikki says. “The consumption piece means I won’t live in fear about where I can consume my medicine, but the biggest win, I believe, is the way the law addresses social equity and justice!”
Nikki may have not planned on being an activist, but since she realized the need to come out of the shadows and tell her story, she’s embraced the role wholeheartedly. She contributes regularly to several online support groups for others with head injuries as well as medical cannabis groups. She’s an active member of ASA, and has been the subject of more than two dozen news articles, podcasts, and blogs, where she tells her story fearlessly so that others may draw strength and inspiration from it. Many of those stories and interviews can be found at https://linktr.ee/Nikkilawley.
“Becoming an advocate for cannabis was never what I imagined,” Nikki says. “But by telling my story I have more impact now than I had as a nurse.” Cannabis is medicine and we must all come out of the cannabis closet. All our stories matter.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Learn all one can about their condition. Health care professionals may have the knowledge but they are not experiencing it themselves directly. They spend 7 minutes with you and we honestly can’t expect them to offer the best plan of care when they are forced to see more patients per hour. Become your own advocate! It’s so critical.
Get support from other survivors and those in the community. Learn about the resources and alternative treatments that might be available. Look into holistic treatments , plant medicines, alternative medicine , diet and other things one can do to take their health and wellness in their own hands. Don’t rely on others because this is your life. No one can do it for you.
Don’t give up ! Life is always going to be hard , you can’t wait for life to be easy before you start to live. Be grateful for the little things ! Live in the moment. When we live in the past it causes depression, worrying about the future creates anxiety. But living in the here and now and appreciating the little things every day can give you true gratitude. Kindness matters. Just because you can’t see someone’s pain doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. We need to learn and advocate for the people struggling with invisible illness or disabilities.
My advice to others is don’t ever think it can’t happen to you!!!! Life can change in a second , no warning , no plans of a huge life shift. Just know everything happens for a reason.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Collaboration over competition is my motto. Currently looking for partners who believe in the patient experience and are trying to do the best things for patients. So often legacy operators and the patients they treated are left out of the conversation! Together we are so much stronger and can make a real difference. Patients and advocates deserve a seat at the table where decisions are being made. At the end of the day the patients are the ones using the products and can provide invaluable information for producers in the industry. I can be reached across all social media platforms or via email or my website www.Nikkiandtheplant.org , linked in , Facebook or Instagram Nikki Lawley or Nikki and the Plant I also have a linktree with my media appearances.
Contact Info:
- Website: Www.Nikkiandtheplant.org
- Instagram: Nikki and the Plant or the plant connects my dots
- Facebook: Nikki Lawley or Nikki and the plant business page
- Linkedin: Nikki Lawley
- Youtube: Nikki and the Plant channel
- Other: Email nikkilawley1@gmail.com While in this form I could not copy and paste the links.
