The Making of a Nurse (37 page)

“Yeah, it’s sweet.” He looked to see if I bought that line. “It’s really good. Well, good-ish.”

“What do you like about camp?”

“The food.” He brightened at that. “The tuck shop.”

“Are there things you don’t like?”

“Nothing really, except that I don’t want to go on the canoe trip.”

Aha!
“Is there anything in particular that worries you about the canoe trip?”

He fell silent. “Not really.” He sat slouched deep into the couch.

“Anything else bothering you?” He shook his head, but I sat quietly waiting and it came.

“Well, about a gazillion things.”

“Such as?”

“I hate camp. My parents send me because my behaviour sucks at home, but I didn’t want to come this year.”

“This is your fourth year at this camp. Does this time feel different?”

“There’s a big difference between being thirteen and being like fourteen, you know. When you’re thirteen it’s the beginning of being a teenager, so that’s sweet, but like once you’re fourteen, you’re all grown-up.”

“I see.” Oh dear, the infirmary was starting to fill up now that the rain had cleared. I could hear them gathering on the porch.
“Mitchell, I’m pleased you’ve come to talk to me. You can come to me anytime with anything that’s bothering you. The canoe trip is not for another week. Let’s talk more about it later, okay?”

“Please don’t call my parents. They’re on vacation in Colorado, white-water rafting, and you’d have to speak to my grandmother. If you do, tell her I’m having a great time.”

There was plenty more to talk about, but at that moment, Bill, the camp’s handyman, burst through the door with a wound on his hand that was gushing blood. No Band-Aid for this one! I slapped clean gauze over it, showed his wife how to elevate it and put pressure on it, and the camp director drove him to the hospital for stitches and a tetanus shot. No sooner had I done all of that than thirteen-year-old Melanie rushed in, crying.

“I’m having an allergic reaction! I need my epi pen or Benadryl or something!” Her face was scrunched with fear and streaked with tears. I took her vital signs and her heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing were all normal. Her chest sounded clear. “What happened?” I asked, removing the blood pressure cuff.

“Someone was eating a nectarine and it sprayed on me. I’m having an allergic reaction.”

She looked perfectly fine. I put my hand on her shoulder. I put her down on one of the beds to rest, close to where I could keep an eye on her. An hour later, she felt ready to rejoin her cabin.

After dinner I walked over to check in on Mitchell in his cabin. He was playing a card game with his cabin mates and when he saw me, flashed me a thumbs-up signal to indicate he was feeling better, but still, I planned to keep a close eye on him.

OCCASIONALLY, I TRIED
to get a glimpse of my own kids, but Harry ran off when he saw me coming because he didn’t want any preferential treatment. Max gave me a hug each morning at breakfast and I didn’t see him again until the evening. They passed their swim tests with flying colours.

Despite my afternoon naps, I was tired at night and afraid I would sleep through a knock at my door. So I always left my radio on softly and kept the walkie-talkie with its occasional bursts of
static, by my bed, just in case. I had no trouble dropping into a deep sleep each night, but just before I did, I took a moment to look out of my window. Fireflies darted by. I marvelled at a sky so full of stars. The lake was a glossy sheet, frosted with ripples, illuminated by the light of the moon. One night a bat swooped past me and I congratulated myself on not screaming. How brave I was becoming! I heard a bird and looked into the tree branches. It hooted again, and yes, it was an owl! Maybe one day I would reach the pinnacle of the great outdoor tradition: I would become a tripper – a strapping, hearty legend.

Midway into the second week, the after-breakfast line-up of miserable-looking kids was growing. The porch and waiting room of the infirmary were filled with campers, all dressed in baggy sweatpants, cozy hoodies, thick, grey woolly socks, and Birkenstocks or Crocs. They regaled me with their woes all at once and quickly figured out that the more tragic and urgent-sounding their malady, the higher up in triage they might rank.

“My mosquito bites are huge and they’re keeping me up all night. I didn’t sleep at all.”

“I touched a poisonous frog and Jamie said I’m going to die unless I get the anti-venom.”

“I’ve got a splinter and it hurts sooo much.”

“My finger is infected.” A girl pushed forward to show me. With a glance I could see it was not, so I put her at the end of the line. “Maybe it’s broken?” she asked, to improve her standing.

What was provoking this onslaught of neediness? After determining there were no real emergencies, I treated the littlest ones for whom waiting was the hardest and then turned to Paul, a fourteen-year-old who had tripped over a rock and had a painful, slightly swollen ankle.

“Can I play soccer later?” he asked after I removed the ice pack.

“I’m afraid not. No sports for you today.” I wrapped his ankle snugly with a pressure bandage and sized him for a pair of crutches.

He fell back against the couch. “What am I going to do all day?” he moaned.

“How about arts and crafts? A deck of cards?”
Dare I utter the dreaded word
, book
?

He looked at me. “Your childhood must have been so boring.” His eyes filled with pity. “No computers, no cell phones, no video games. What
did
you do all day?”

“Well, it was rough.” I stifled a laugh. “There were hardships, but we had great music.”

“That’s true,” he agreed, and strummed a few bars of “Smoke on the Water” using his tennis racket as an air guitar. They all seemed to be into classic rock ‘n’ roll – Led Zeppelin, The Who, and the Stones – and took great delight in discovering them.

Next, I saw a little boy who I had been following for a flare-up of eczema. I examined his arms, elbows, and knees. Ouch, I thought, looking at the red and painful-looking rash.

“Could you please try to be more positive?” he asked me ever so politely. “It helps me if you don’t seem worried when you look at my rash.”

Touché
. Point well taken.

“Next!”

But how sick could they be, really?
I wondered as I eavesdropped on snippets of their conversations taking place out in the waiting room.

“Who’s brushing their teeth this week?” a counsellor asked his brood.

“When are you going on a day off, Jackie?” a little girl asked her counsellor.

“Tomorrow, sweetie, and I can hardly wait!”

“When do
I
get a day off?” her little camper asked, with such wistfulness in her voice.

“Doggie breath. Is it worse in terriers or poodles?” someone asked, but I didn’t hear the answer.

“Jasmine, the swim instructor, is so hot!”

“Yeah, let’s cover her with ketchup and get one of the trippers to lick it off!”

“Yeah, how ’bout we start a rumour about her and spread it all over camp!”

“Let’s find two frogs and make them get married.” Two girls were sitting on the floor, playing jacks. I hadn’t ever seen that game played before.

“My mom’s a forensic pathologist!” one girl told her friend.

“Mine’s a chiropractor and a video maker,” the other said. “Actually, I have two moms. The other one is a criminal defence lawyer.”

“What are you into?” Two quiet kids from one of the older cabins struck up a conversation.

“I’m into cartooning.”

“Oh, animé?”

“No, manga.”

Perhaps the infirmary was the camp “water cooler,” I thought as I taped and iced, bandaged, soothed, cleaned, hugged, examined, and listened.

OTHER THAN INCLEMENT WEATHER
, the only thing that deterred campers from visiting the infirmary was the tuck shop. The two afternoons when tuck (candy) was given out I hid in the office and had time to myself. I hoped I was being sympathetic enough to their complaints, but my work with critically ill patients for so many years had hardened me to life’s common problems. With my own kids, I have always tried to help them deal with life’s discomforts, not avoid them. I want to spare them the pain I’d endured of being overly sensitive. Even as toddlers, if they fell I waited in the wings to see their reaction and went to them only if they called for me. If they needed me, I comforted them, but only then. The joke in my own family was not to bother Mom if a cut is merely bleeding or dripping. My kids know only
gushing
blood catches my attention.

The vast majority of kids at camp seemed to be having a wonderful time, but there were a few, just a handful really, who were miserable. Those were the ones whose worried faces I saw over and over again, and all my hugs and words of encouragement weren’t making a bit of difference. Yet, when I brought them into my office, shut the door, sat them down, and gave them my complete attention, it was amazing what came out. They all got up afterward feeling, if not always “cured,” at least better. The listening and paying attention were the treatments themselves. I figured
that out when the girl with the “infected” finger came back the next day to show it to me again. “Now, is it infected?” she asked hopefully. I took a quick glance, again said no, and got instantly zapped by her angry face.

“Come here,” I said more kindly. I took her finger in my hand and brought it, together with her, closer to me and into a light source. I examined her perfectly normal finger, then the other nine, then her hands and arms, and looked into her now-smiling face.
Ahh, I get it. She thinks I’m treating her finger, but I’m really attending to her soul
.

I became known as “The Splinter Queen.” I developed a gentle, but sophisticated technique using a twenty-five-gauge needle to “de-roof” the skin over the splinter. If I took the time to examine the patient, scrubbed up like I was about to perform surgery, cleaned the site thoroughly, and distracted the kid with a few jokes, I had those mini-logs extricated in no time. A dab of Polysporin on the spot and I sent them on their way. The Splinter Ceremony became my specialty.

But there were some kids whom I couldn’t “cure.” They came almost every day to the infirmary with long faces, complaining of stomach aches and headaches, yet later the same day I would see them kicking a soccer ball or climbing a tree. If they caught sight of me walking past, their bright, smiling faces would suddenly droop. Jenny was one of them. Her throat was sore, or her head hurt, and she wanted to go home. I gave her the grape Tylenol until it was all gone, then the orange, then the bubble gum flavour. She confounded me because when I saw her around camp she was playing, dancing, even water-skiing. She had lots of friends, yet the moment she saw me she left them and came over. “I don’t feel well,” she said, her face instantly doleful.

On a visit to camp, the doctor told me it was called somatizing, displacing and sublimating. “They don’t know how to express their feelings. It’s easier for them to point to a physical discomfort rather than an emotional one. What they want from you is mothering, in the absence of their own mother or father.”

I had no trouble giving that warm, fuzzy mothering touch to them. I felt for Mitchell and knew he was probably uncomfortable
being overweight and unable to keep up with the others. Sarah, the dance instructor, had anxiety and possibly an eating disorder. I was even fond of Greg, the kid with
ADD
who, despite his daily meds, was still off the wall, loud, and disruptive, but quite endearing. He came in almost daily with minor complaints. When I read in his chart that his father had recently died, I asked him about it.

“Things happen,” he said like an old, wise man. “Them’s the breaks. But take a look at my toe. Is that gangrene? Do you think you’ll have to amputate?”

My heart was soft to them all. They were all, myself included, city slicker kids dealing with communal living, bug bites, and food that wasn’t always delicious and like what they ate at home. When they were cold, they didn’t know how to warm themselves or how to get dry when they were wet. They didn’t know how to calm or comfort themselves. They didn’t have a place in their minds where they could go to work things out. They didn’t know how to make themselves feel safe. I understood these things intimately. I had had to learn to calm myself, so that I could be calm for others. I had had to comfort others, even when I felt no comfort. Once again, I sat down to leaf though those health forms to try to understand it all.

Finally, by the end of the second week of camp I was able to match up names with neuroses and faces with fears. And as for the kids with “special needs,” I hardly ever saw them. I waved at the kid in the wheelchair when I spotted her on the tennis court. The autistic kid was doing fine. I finally met the diabetic camper, but only because he came to the infirmary to refill his insulin pump. Those kids loved camp; it was the healthy kids who got sick or were unhappy. They were the ones trawling for drugs, pills, creams, or bandages for any and every deviation from their usual state of well-being.