Welcome to My World!

Hi, I’m J. Nicole, RN.

Niki to literally everyone who actually knows me.

I’m a NICU nurse, a health coach, a book hoarder, a Cherry Pepsi loyalist, and the slightly unhinged multi-passionate human behind NicoleInScrubs. I live in New Bern, NC with my husband Rich, who has been putting up with me since 2001 and somehow still chooses to stay. He’s a retired Marine and honestly the reason our house is clean and dinner usually happens. I contribute moral support and snacks.

Before nursing school I was a graphic artist and photographer running my own business. I was good at it. I loved it. And I fully expected that to be my story.

Then life had other plans.

Rich and I lost three babies. Anthony Maddox was our firstborn. Avery Shea was our daughter. Richard Franklin was our youngest. All three passed from complications related to an incredibly rare combination of two genetic syndromes. Each of them spent time in the NICU. Each of them was loved beyond what words can actually hold.

Losing them is the kind of thing that doesn’t just break you. It rebuilds you into someone different. Someone who sees everything through a different lens.

During the worst of it, surrounded by monitors and tiny hands and nurses who showed up every single shift with steadiness and grace, something shifted in me. The nurses and doctors caring for baby Richard kept telling me I needed to be a nurse. I thought they were just being kind. Turns out they were right.

I went back to school. I became a Patient Care Tech in 2016, earned my Associate Degree in Nursing in 2019, passed my NCLEX, and became an RN that same year. My first RN role was in a Neuroscience Intermediate Care Unit, where I learned more in a year than I thought possible.

On January 30, 2021, I moved to the NICU.

Coming full circle doesn’t even begin to cover it.

The NICU is where I found the part of nursing that feels like home. Tiny humans, enormous stakes, families navigating the worst phone call of their lives. I get it in a way most people never have to. And I show up for those families the way Richard’s nurses showed up for us.

But somewhere between night shifts and grief and trying to hold my own body together, I also hit a wall with my own health.

I’d been dealing with PCOS since my early twenties. Pre-diabetes diagnosis in 2006. Years of being told my labs were “borderline” and to just eat less and move more. I was 209 lbs, exhausted, running on caffeine and stubbornness, doing everything right according to everyone who kept telling me I just needed to try harder.

Spoiler: I didn’t need to try harder. I needed the right tools.

In October 2023 I started GLP-1 therapy. And y’all… the food noise stopped. Like actually stopped. For the first time in my adult life I understood what it felt like to not be white-knuckling my appetite every single day. My blood pressure normalized. My energy came back. I lost 94 lbs. I ran a 5K. I wear bathing suits now without the internal negotiation beforehand.

I reached my goal weight on July 5, 2025 and I’ve been maintaining ever since.

I’m not telling you this because I want to sell you something. I’m telling you this because I spent YEARS being dismissed by a medical system that kept calling me “borderline” and sending me home with a pamphlet. And if you’ve been there too… hi. You’re in the right place.

What I share here is what I wish someone had handed me years ago. The actual science behind GLP-1s and peptides. Real talk about PCOS and perimenopause and what’s actually happening in your body. High protein recipes that don’t taste like cardboard. Products I actually use and would tell my best friend about. And occasionally whatever book I’m currently reading because my Kindle is basically a fifth limb at this point.

I’m a registered nurse and a health coach. I’m not your doctor. I’m not going to tell you what to do. But I will sit with you in the mess, explain the science in a way that actually makes sense, and help you figure out what questions to ask the person who IS your doctor.

Zero fluff. Zero fearmongering. Just real talk from someone who’s been there.

So glad you’re here.

XOXO,
Niki, RN