In this episode, my guest Sherri Tutkus, RN, BSN, Founder & CEO of Green Nurse Group, came on the podcast to share a powerful and inspiring mother son story that follows the timeline from receiving a diagnosis at birth of her son Nicholas with Branchio-Oculo-Facial Syndrome through current day. Sherri gives one of the most powerful illustrations over the course of the episode, of a mother's love, courage, compassion, resilience and tenacity that I've ever heard, and is a fantastic example of holding onto presumption of competence as a guiding light, against all odds.

Sherri Tutkus is the founder and CEO of GreenNurse Group, Nursing Director at Irie Bliss Wellness and host of GreenNurse on the Go Radio Show. Sherri is a cannabis nurse, patient and advocate. She earned her Bachelors in Science and Nursing from Boston College. She is highly skilled Registered Nurse with 30 years’ practical experience in various departments within the hospital and home setting. She is utilizing her expert nursing skills as a medical center specialist, clinical nurse liaison and educator to bridge the gap between patients and the cannabis community. Sherri has been educating and implementing holistic integrative healing modalities within her practice for over 20 years. She educates on the endocannabinoid system and the safe utilization of cannabis at dispensaries, hospitals, clinics, patients homes and she regularly does pop up events, seminars and expos. Sherri is an international speaker and she has contributed to the writing of the first cannabis nursing textbook with her cannabis nurse colleagues that will be available in nursing schools across the country. Sherri is a member of the American Cannabis Nurses Association and founding member of The Cannabis Nurses Network and was nominated as one of two nurses for “Health Professional of the Year” for the 2020 New England Cannabis Convention. Sherri brings passion and purpose to her work teaching bio-psycho-social-spiritual healing using cannabis as a tool.

In the first part of this podcast, Sherri discusses her own background and connection to cannabinoid medicine. The tools she learned in her own journey enabled Sherri to cope with frequent and ongoing surgeries, procedures, treatments for her son Nicholas and advocate vociferously on his behalf.

"When I'm presenting to people, I use myself as a case study. Because basically, prior to me getting ill, I had a history of migraine headaches, ADHD, and anxiety, that was managed with traditional medicine. I was functioning, I was healthy, single mother of three, child with a disability that we're going to talk about, but knowing that I had migraine headaches and at ADHD symptoms should have been a clear indicator that I had an Endocannabinoid deficiency. So everything that we do or don't do in our lives as far as health and wellness affects this neurotransmitter signaling system called the endocannabinoid system, and that the job of that system is to bring balance."

She goes on to explain, "By the end before I discovered cannabis. I was on over 16 pharmaceuticals. So, as I've learned over time, if you're taking more than 10 pharmaceuticals, there's 100% chance of having an adverse drug reaction. Polypharmacy. I fit into that polypharmacy category. I am not anti pharma. However, what is really essential for people to understand when they are being prescribed pharmaceuticals is to ask those critical questions and to look at what side effects there are to look at the blackbox warning Okay, how many people have died? You know, what are the side effects, what are the adverse effects, you need to have knowledge knowledge is power. The other thing that people People don't realize is that a lot of pharmaceuticals have a drug nutrient depletion"

She goes on to explain, " I have have a history of Polycystic Ovarian disease which is very interesting. And that yeah, that is considered to be a clinical Endocannabinoid deficiency diagnoses as well. So I had issues with fertility all along. ... And then my third pregnancy... it's interesting, you know I gained all kinds of weight and wasn't happy and I started changing my lifestyle when the babies came. And all of a sudden my reproductive system started to auto regulate. I was using specific supplements and nutrition. I changed my diet, I became vegan, I did a raw diet, and all of a sudden, I'm a fertile Myrtle. And before we know it, I'm pregnant with my third"

From here, Sherri goes on to discuss the birth of Nicholas and the immediate realization that he had multiple issues of which she was not aware of up until the moment of his birth. She explained to me in writing prior to the recording of this episode, the following, "All of my births were traumatic experiences however this pregnancy was the best and the easiest. I had an uneventful healthy pregnancy. I broke my water 6 weeks early and when my first boy was born he was not breathing and they had to resuscitate him and over the course of my first postpartum days I learned that my son had a rare genetic disorder called Branchio-Oculo Facial Syndrome."

BOFS is inherited in an autosomal dominant manner. Each child of an individual with BOFS has a 50% change of inheriting the variant. Nick’s dad carried the gene and at the time of diagnoses the gene had not been identified.

She discusses the realization of impact, "you have these craniofacial anomalies that required over 15 surgeries, but the things that they said about mental retardation was not true. The surgical stuff they were able to do . I engaged upon a journey with him that I would do anything for him. It was kind of like, I just got to do this. And so he became my full time job. "

I asked Sherri the question, "How did you do it? How did you handle this huge weight of reality repeatedly?" She explained, "I got back to really the basics of self care and being present and grounded. I had already have a lot of those spiritual tools. My son opened up the door to the unseen worlds for me, which is a whole other show. But literally, I kind of felt like and I know it sounds crazy, but I'm sure other mothers can agree or associate or identify.... that I just felt a really strong connection with him and being able to understand what his needs were even before he could communicate."

She goes on to add, "it gets back to what I can and cannot control you know, even if I can't control my emotions, even if I'm out of control, like hysterical or anxiety-ridden or sad, I still can have the ability to control what I'm doing and not doing in my life. And so what I knew to be true was in order for me to be the best version of myself, I needed to do everything that I could to take care of myself. And that included my mental health."

She goes on to say, "But he's a true miracle. I gave him every opportunity. And he basically showed me through his own actions and his kindness and compassion and his grit and his ability. The kid had so much resilience and he wanted to heal, you know, he's not mentally retarded, he got set up with the Deaf Services as we found out later, he doesn't have sensory neural hearing loss, he has a bone conduction hearing loss. And so he basically told me one day Mom, I want to smile with the rest of the kids. And I was like, oh, of course you do. How do I make that happen? And boy, that was a scary journey. We literally embarked upon the journey of having my boy get a smile."

"The amazing craniofacial team at Boston Children's Hospital did an experimental surgery that is called facial reanimation. And basically they didn't know. They said it would evolve over time, would the nerve take and would it connect and would it work? So here we are... I don't know here we are going. Through 16 hours of surgery 10 days in the hospital, not knowing if this is going to work or not. That was another faith based thing. Honestly, you know, it's all you have, and then literally one morning when I was waking him up for school, all of a sudden he sits up in bed. He smiles. So he's really he's come a long way. He's 14 years old now. When he was in sixth grade, he said, I want to go to public school. Oh my god, how is he going to be able to go to public school? So I was like, Okay, let's try to make it happen. And we embarked on the journey of integrating him into the public system."

Bringing us to current day, Sherri explains, "You know, he is thriving. He's finishing up the eighth grade this year. And his freshman year, next year in high school, he will be in the public school. He still has an IEP, he's going to be in all honors and advanced honors classes is number one subject Spanish. And one of the other thing is that, you know, oftentimes as parents, we may feel sorry for our kid and you may feel bad. He doesn't feel sorry for himself. He doesn't feel bad."

A final quote, "So what can I control? I try to control other people. And we can't control anyone. We can't. And that's the part that was the biggest lesson that I learned. And he taught me that, he taught me where my power lies and where it doesn't lie and how to choose and pick my battles and what's important and what's not important. And in the grand scheme of life, when you can pull back from that and see, what am I doing to be the best version of myself, so I can help my child thrive?"

Sherri's links:
Green Nurse Group: https://www.greennursegroup.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GreenNurseSherri
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sherri_tutkus/, https://www.instagram.com/greennursegroup/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Green_Nurses
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sherri-tutkus-rn-bsn-912b7776/