Marissa Fratoni, Holistic RN - Cannabis Therapeutics - Maternal Health - Writer - Public Speaker, is a wealth of information and insight on cannabinoid therapeutics holistic medicine and integrative health. I met Marissa through Jessie Gill, Marijuana Mommy, when discussing our medical cannabis project, wondering if she knew of any local to MA cannabis nurses so was thrilled when she agreed to have a chat.

We started off talking about how she went from traditional nursing in a very demanding operating room at a local hospital to becoming a visiting nurse, then "on a whim" taking a job in a local dispensary, she says,

"Working in the dispensary just completely opened, changed my entire perception of the plant. I was in interacting with people who were very chronically ill and seeing miraculous changes in their overall quality of life with the use of cannabis. And these are things as a visiting nurse, I didn't see you know, my patients were always you know, very a lot of them were very compliant with their pharmaceutical regimens and whatever their doctors were telling them, but they weren't healing and what I saw in the dispensary was cannabis patients consistently coming in and saying, this is helping me it's improved my entire life. It's changed my life. I mean, those are things that I'm was not hearing as a visiting nurse"

She ended up engaging with a lot of people looking for support and she started to offer consultations to women; mainly weight loss, wellness consultations in the realm of motherhood. But then, she started working at the dispensary and had patients who found her that way too when her name was coming up as a cannabis nurse.

"It was a game-changer for them, you know they were looking for people who could help them build a bridge between what they weren't receiving in the medical community and what they were getting in the medical cannabis community. For a lot of patients, they're stuck navigating all of this on their own. And that's essentially where cannabis nurses come in"

We also discuss her role interacting with the traditional medical community, she states, "my goal as a nurse is to not to get them to just completely transfer off of medications. I think there's a lot of poor information out there and a lot of people think that it's either-or, and it shouldn't be. There's a lot of great things available through modern medicine. There's also a lot of great things available through holistic and integrative medicine and practices. And I think my goal as a holistic nurse is to help to again, bridge that gap."

We discuss the CBD craze, her concerns with product safety and labeling, emphasizing that every company that has a quality CBD product on the market will be backed up by functional lab testing, where they're able to tell you the cannabinoid profile and if it's tested positive or negative for any contaminants. If it's tested positive experiment, it shouldn't be on the shelf but they should be able to tell you what is in that product within that bottle."

Marissa also has some experience working with patients in recovery using cannabis as a "harm reduction" tool and has some really relevant insights on working with those struggling with heroin addiction and how cannabis can be a useful but cautions that medical supervision and support are needed when detoxing, etc.

It was a pleasure to pick Marissa's brain on her broad offerings and wide array of lived experiences she's developed into a fabulous platform. Check out her links and thanks for listening!

Links:
Website: https://holisticnursemama.blog/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marissa.fratoni
Instagram: @holisticnursemama
Twitter: @Marissa_Fratoni
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marissa-fratoni-94b62429/
Central MA Yoga: https://centralmassyoga.com/marissa-fratoni/
Medium: https://medium.com/@marissafratoni
https://cannamommy.org/about