The Making of a Nurse (38 page)

Most afternoons, I stuck a note on the door: “Infirmary closed. Nurse on walkie-talkie for emergencies only,” and snuck away. I went for a swim or a walk in the woods. I needed time to sit and think, to read, and take care of myself. Once I swam out to the raft in the middle of the lake and stayed there, treading water. Soon, a crowd gathered on the shore, signalling madly for me to come back. “What’s wrong?” I called out to them.

“Shannon threw up.”

They could probably deal with it themselves, but I turned back and headed for shore. It was often difficult to find a quiet moment to myself. Even though there wasn’t a scheduled after-lunch clinic, if I was in the infirmary, sure enough, they would come. I’d be sitting doing paperwork and would hear the porch door open and close and soon they would turn the radio on to a rock station. The air
conditioning and my stash of popsicles and Gatorade was irresistible to them. One afternoon, on a beautiful sunny day, the infirmary was filling up. They waited for me, playing rock, paper, scissors, telling jokes, and reading out loud the juicy bits from the sex ed booklets I’d put out for them.
That’s it, I’ve had enough
. I got up and switched the radio to the
CBC
.

“Eww … what is that freakin’ music?” someone said.

“It sucks big time,” another voice agreed.

Thank you, Rimsky-Korsakoff
, I thought as they fled, screen door banging behind them.

BY THE END
of that second week of camp, we were well into a sweltering heat wave. At breakfast I got up to the podium and launched into a lecture about sunblock, hats, and water bottles. They booed.
Yeah, right
, they grumbled.
Get real
.

The next morning I chose an adorable volunteer, the littlest camper from the youngest group, the Purple Cabin, and spoke into the microphone. “Lucy will demonstrate what to do in this hot weather.” She bounced up to the front of the dining hall. She put on her baseball cap. She unhooked her water bottle from her belt loop and took a long slurp. Everyone clapped. The Turquoise, Maroon, and Silver cabins hooted and whistled. “Woo-hoo! Way to go, Lucy! You rock, girl.”

I returned to the microphone and waited for the noise to settle down. “If you want to feel well and stay healthy in this heat, let’s see those hats and water bottles. Thank you, Lucy.”

They clapped and then pressed in a throng all trying to leave the dining room at once.

“That nurse is mean,” I heard someone say.

“Yeah, she’s pretty tough.”

By noon, they started staggering in with flushed faces, headaches, and heat rash.

“Where’s your hat, your water bottle?” I asked Greg, who usually talked a mile a minute. He looked pale and lethargic.

“I wasn’t thirsty.” He stretched full out, taking up the entire
couch. His lips were dry and cracked. “I don’t like the taste of camp water. At home, I only drink bottled water.”

“It doesn’t matter. You have to drink, especially in this heat.”

“I’m not thirsty. I don’t feel good.” He lay there, unmoving. “Water is so not fun to drink.”

“Here,” I handed him a glass of red Gatorade, “drink this.”

“I think I’ll pass.”

“C’mon, Greg. You need fluids in your system.”

“I don’t feel like it.”

“Then you leave me no choice.” I picked up a needle, grabbed his arm, and pulled it toward me. I snapped on a rubber tourniquet above the elbow. The other kids looked on, horrified.

“Hey, what are you doing?” He pulled back, but I hung on tight.

“I’m looking for a vein to start an intravenous. No one’s getting dehydrated on my watch!”

“I’ll drink!” he said, chugging down the Gatorade plus a glass of water before bolting out of there.

Well, I said to myself, that just proves that you can lead a horse to water, and you
can
make him drink! Yes, I was getting a bad rep. They had even given me a scary nickname: Nursezilla. It came about when I gave a child two tablets for a headache and next thing I heard was “crunch, crunch,” followed by a long wail. I’d forgotten to tell her they weren’t chewables and the bitterness made her retch.

Jasmine, the pretty swim instructor, was there and laughed. “We’ll have to call you Nursezilla, the nurse from hell.” I must have looked upset because she hastily added, “Just joking. It wasn’t meant as a diss.”

Yes, I had to control and patrol them, mother and monitor them, nurse and nag them. I was friend, police officer, mommy, rule-maker, and enforcer. I was constantly picking up pieces of expensive clothing left behind at the swim docks, the infirmary, or the dining hall. I would find articles of Gap, Roots, and Banana Republic clothing, most of them with name tags carefully sewn onto them by someone’s parent or, possibly, maid. “Who belongs
to this gorgeous Lululemon yoga shirt?” I said in the dining hall, holding up the wrinkled, soiled garment that someone’s parents paid eighty dollars for. “If no one claims it, I’ll enjoy wearing it.” They groaned and laughed me off.

I knew I didn’t stand a chance of being cool in their eyes, but I disliked the idea of being the nurse from hell. I came up with a plan. I took a drive into the nearby town. At the Giant Tiger – “Your All Canadian Family Discount Store” – I stocked up. Red licorice and Smarties and a bulk-sized bag of Skittles. The green ones would be for homesickness, one to start with, two if it was a severe case. Red ones for headaches and upset stomachs. Yellow for cuts and scrapes, purple for mosquito bites, and orange for whatever ails ya. A bag of lemon-and-honey-flavoured hard candies for the kids with sore throats. I went to the dollar store and bought some decks of cards, a bunch of
Archie
comics, a plastic game of checkers, and a metallic dart game to keep them busy in the waiting room.
I’ll show them who’s the mean nurse
. On the way back to camp, I stopped to pick up a few counsellors who were hitchhiking back to camp from town.

“What did you guys do on your day off?” I asked.

“Sleep, just sleep,” they said, and to see their refreshed faces, I believed them. Playing is not as easy as it looks. Sleep was a precious commodity at camp and sometimes the infirmary was a hotel where they could crash and catch up on rest. (The time when the Copper cabin of older campers was caught streaking and were sent to the infirmary overnight was meant to be a punishment, to separate them from their cabin mates, but it turned out to be a cure. By morning, they were the most well-rested kids in camp.) Camp went at a frenetic pace and there was little downtime.

THE CANOE TRIPS
were planned for week three. Most kids loved them, but some did everything possible to get out of going. I had been counselling Mitchell and he agreed to give it a try.

“Camp is about conquering your fears. Learning new things,” Terry said firmly, backing me up. “It’s the reason we don’t let the homesick ones go home, unless the parents insist.”

They were gone only three days, but when the buses started rolling into camp, bringing them back from Algonquin Park, I eagerly rushed down to greet them. I missed them. I was particularly anxious to see how Mitchell and a few others had managed.

“I swallowed a live minnow!” hollered Greg, the first one off, leaping from the top step of the bus.

“Technically speaking, that means he’s not a vegetarian any more!” shouted his buddy.

“We got to see two frogs getting married!” said the girl who had been looking for that very thing, but her friend corrected her, “I think they were only engaged.”

They clambered off the bus, messy, dirty, sweaty, smelling of bonfire and looking spotty with mosquito bites and splotchy in areas missed with sunblock, but they were healthy and happy. Standing around in groups, boys and girls together, they were laughing and telling their stories. Even those who had been nervous and reluctant returned to camp triumphant and pleased with themselves.

The last one off the bus was Mitchell. He came down one step at a time, dragging his knapsack behind him. At the bottom, he stopped and leaned against the bus. I went right over to him. “Mitch, how was it?”

“Awesome,” he said uneasily, “but I feel bad.”

“Come with me to the infirmary.”

His counsellor took me aside. “No offence, Nursezilla, but he stunk up the whole bus. We could barely breathe.”

I went to get a thermometer and when I returned I knew what the problem was. “Mitchell, do you have diarrhea?”

“No,” he said. “But my stomach hurts. Could I sleep here tonight?”

“Yes, if you need to.”

As I made a bed for Mitchell in a separate room in case what he had was infectious, I went back to him. His stomach was rumbling loudly. “Mitch, there’s the bathroom.”

“Thanks, I’m good.”

“Are you sure you don’t have diarrhea?”

“No, I don’t.” He looked so embarrassed. I cringed for him.

“Okay, Mitchell. I’ll leave you alone.”

When I came back later, he seemed to have fallen asleep but his stomach was still gurgling.

“Nurse Tilda?” he said softly.

“Yes, Mitchell. I thought you were sleeping.”

“You know what? I have diarrhea.”

“I thought so, sweetie.” I washed my hands, put on disposable gloves, gave him some Gatorade, turned his room into a gastroisolation ward, and prayed I wouldn’t get it too.

“Should I take medicine?”

“Not necessary. You’ll probably feel better in the morning.”

If he did, I’d tell him the joke a camper had told me the other day.

“Have you seen the movie called
Constipation?”
he’d asked.

“No,” I’d answered, rolling my eyes at yet another scatological joke.

“That’s because it’s
not out yet!
How ’bout
Diarrhea
, have you seen that one?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“Oh, it’s all over town!”

I stayed close by Mitchell for the next few hours, not because I was worried, but because I was fond of him. In the morning, he felt much better, and waved to me at breakfast.

That day at lunch there was an announcement of a swim marathon for the older campers, counsellors, and staff. It would be one trip around the entire lake: three and a half kilometres. I wanted to do it. I went over to the sign-up sheet on the bulletin board and put my name down. I wasn’t fast, but I was strong and I felt fairly confident I could do it. I wanted two things only: to finish and not be last.

My son Harry and his counsellor were my spotters, following beside me in a canoe. “Go, Mom, go,” Harry said in his soft voice while the counsellor crooned in a beautiful, bluesy voice, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” by Green Day, and “You’re Beautiful,” by James Blunt, and then in deference to my venerable age, every single verse of “American Pie.” I found those mellow songs surprisingly motivating for that slow, but steady swim. “You’re doing great,” he called out from time to time.
“You’re going to make it.” I listened to them and tried to find the coach inside of me. An hour and a half later, at the finish line, when I finally hauled myself out of the water, there were still a few swimmers in the water behind me. My legs were wobbly, but I’d made it and I wasn’t last. We were all finding ways to triumph at camp.

I WAS HEADING INTO
the home stretch. It was the first day of my fourth and last week of camp and as usual, the evening clinic was packed. There were kids coming at me from all directions, asking questions, and presenting me with their various aching body parts. That night there were the usual sore throats, blisters, splinters, earaches, itchy bug bites, two kids worried they had lice, and one with an ingrown toenail. Then I heard a soft moan and something in that sound that made me come running. Terry was carrying a little girl in his arms. It was Lucy, my sun safety poster child! “My leg hurts,” she said, holding on to her thigh.

“What happened?” I asked as Terry laid her gently on the bed.

“I fell off the swing,” she said calmly, “in the playground.”

“Did anyone see you fall?” I looked around.

“I was there.” Her counsellor squirmed and looked away, knowing she should have been supervising her kids more closely. “But I didn’t actually see it,” she admitted.

I examined Lucy’s leg. The skin was intact. There was no wound or bleeding, no bruising or swelling, and no difference in size between the two legs. The pulses in both legs were strong and easy to palpate and she had no difficulty wiggling her toes. I made baseline measurements to follow any changes. Only when I asked her to move her leg did she wince in pain. Her blood pressure was normal and her pulse slow and steady. Otherwise, she looked comfortable and refused pain medication. In the waiting room, the other kids clamoured and were getting impatient and demanding. Darren called out that he was getting the fizzy ginger-ale feeling in his head. Leslie, a counsellor, dropped by for her anti-depressant medication, and wanted to ask me a few questions, if I had a moment, but unfortunately I didn’t just then, could she come back
later? A little boy from the Silver cabin had a sore ankle, but I only had time to call out to his counsellor, “
RICE!
Rest and Ice,” and toss him a tensor bandage, adding, “Compression and Elevation!”

I returned to Lucy. She was sitting up in bed, eating a bowl of Cheerios. Her leg looked completely normal, but she still couldn’t move it without wincing. I was worried. I thought of the long, dark, bumpy road to the hospital for something that might get better on its own. Could it wait until the morning? I was still far from clearing out the infirmary and I had to return the calls of dozens of parents who had been leaving messages. Some of them I dreaded calling. So many were upset or dissatisfied or suspicious. One angry father wanted to know why no one was looking after his kid’s rash he read about in a letter home. I had to return a call to Clare’s mother, who was not happy with the message I had left on her answering machine, in which I said that Clare was enjoying camp. “Well, she’d better be enjoying it with what it’s costing me, and her father doesn’t pay a cent,” was the mother’s return message. Then there was the father of a camper who was a surgeon I’ve known for years at the hospital where I work. When I told him that Zoë had come in with another headache yesterday, but was fine today, he told me to arrange for her to come home to Toronto for a
CT
scan of her head. He left a message that if I didn’t call him back by this evening, he would drive up there right away to examine his daughter himself. I figured these were the “helicopter parents” I had read about in a magazine at the dentist’s office. They were over-involved, controlling parents who micro-managed their children’s lives to ensure everything would go perfectly. They were constantly trying to pave the way for their children, keeping them safe or rescuing them. Very good, but how devastating if a child’s expectation was for everything to go perfectly and mosquito bites happen?