Friday "Recap"

Well, despite there being no emergencies* these past two weeks, I wouldn't say this school year has been off to a great start. Out of approximately 15-20 emergency care plans I mailed home after failing to reach parents after multiple phone call tries, zero have been returned. It's a bit unsettling to have things like "peanut allergy/epipen" written on an emergency card and then have no epipen, no other paperwork, and your phone calls seem to be getting lost in outer space. My new school, in a world away of a different neighborhood than my two others, was supposed to be an upgrade with more caring adult parents, and less strung out unidentifiable relatives. Instead I have one diabetic for whom I STILL don't have current orders, and another one breathing down my neck about my care who is certifiable crazy. (She refers to the child as her "daughter's son" even though it's her name as the mother on the birth certificate, and when I asked the kid who he lives with he said his mom.) On top of it all, the principal at my middle school is hounding me to get all the TDap records in and we still have 30+ kids to chase down.

 

The saving grace this week: starting color vision testing on the kindergarten boys. It sounds twisted, but finding the color blind kids is thrilling. It's satisfying to think everyone will know this about the kid sooner rather than later, and delivering the actual test is a joy itself: I sit in the back of the class in tiny chairs I fear breaking, listening to ABC songs, and I get to meet all the kindergarten kids - they're a blast, some of them.

 

Let's hope the beginning of this year isn't an indication of what the rest of the year might be like.

 

 

*Just barely. I answered a call from my trusty health clerk on Tuesday who asked me to get to where she was in a hurry: my old elementary school, site of four 9-1-1 calls, and one of the greatest concentration of weirdos in town. I found one of my old kids in the middle of a bad asthma attack, sitting with a cracked out uncle who came without medication upon getting word of the attack, because mom is in Las Vegas doing who knows what. It was my call: ER? Nope, I dug out her old medication in the cupboard, which technically isn't allowed because new paperwork hadn't been signed for the school year. Rules are meant to be broken, and I'm not sure what kind of person I'd be if I withheld albuterol in the face of a wheezing child on account of her inept mother being too irresponsible to do the right paperwork. Disaster averted, but seriously, some people should not be parents...or in the case of the cracked out uncle who arrived medication-less and suggested we give her a peppermint, they shouldn't be guardians either.