Emergency Department Nurse, BSN, CEN | Fargo, North Dakota
Writing under a pseudonym to protect her professional identity
Ashley Carter is a pseudonym. The author is a real, practicing emergency department nurse writing under an alias to protect her professional identity — not because she’s ashamed, but because she’s practical. She has two kids in the school system and patients who trust her, and she doesn’t want anyone spending even ten seconds wondering whether their ER nurse was impaired during their care. The answer is unambiguously no. Ashley has treated her migraines with low-dose medical cannabis for over four years, on her own time, with the same clinical discipline she applies to every other medication in her life. She writes because she’s done pretending that a 5mg edible on a Saturday afternoon is somehow less acceptable than the Ambien or the Xanax in her colleagues’ medicine cabinets — and she knows she’s not the only healthcare worker who feels that way.
Three shelves: ibuprofen, rizatriptan, and a 5mg THC tincture. Same prescriber, same rules, same compliance — and only one of them requires a pseudonym.
Read Article →The chronic-pain patient in bed seven, the discharge instructions that never mention cannabis, and the question an ER nurse can’t ask for you.
Read Article →Rotating shift work rewires the brain a patient at a time. A 5mg sublingual tincture, a sixteen-hour buffer, and a Friday afternoon she didn’t lose to triptan fog.
Read Article →No clinical guideline gave her the number. She built it herself, in her kitchen, the week she got her card — and she’s kept it for four and a half years without exception.
Read Article →J mentions her Ambien at the coffee maker. Another colleague asks about Ashley’s card with the door closed. The distance between those two scenes is the whole subject.
Read Article →The neurologist couldn’t officially recommend it, but couldn’t tell her not to try it either. It took a while to understand she was being as honest as she was allowed to be.
Read Article →