Food for thought

A noble cause of course, but I'm not sure what the best way to go about it is: "How to ensure no schoolchild dies of an allergy attack."

Student of the Month

In Diabetic Land, when a student is chosen as "Student of the Month" in their class, they have a lunch BBQ with the principal - or so I'd been told. Somehow both of my diabetics were chosen as student of the month (emphasis on "somehow" given Spitfire's grades) this month, and today was the luncheon. Just to tease Spitfire, who is 9 going on 17, I told her I'd crash her luncheon to embarrass her. I did, and here's what I saw for lunch: a "double dog" (an internet search for an image proved futile; it's a prepackaged thing of two halves of a hot dog served side by side - don't ask how they heated them up), Goldfish brand cookies, chocolate milk, and carrots. This took place in a classroom with a few of the select students and principal, with an iPod docked onto tinny speakers playing Taylor Swift and the like breaking up and otherwise completely silent classroom while the kids munched. Granted, it's a cold and wet day, so there certainly wasn't going to be an actual BBQ, but still. The kids seem to think it's a treat to eat with the principal, it looked more like punishment to me, particularly with the awkward silence. Apparently 4th and 5th graders don't have much to say to the school principal.

No problemo

I was out to eat last week during our break, sitting on the sidewalk patio of a restaurant. A family with two young kids was walking by, and just as they did, the young girl vomited all over the sidewalk. The poor mother was horrified, apologizing profusely while trying to rinse it off. "Not to worry," I assured her, "I'm a school nurse. I see it all the time." Sure enough, on my first day back yesterday, I was overloaded with kids who had vomited in class: four or five all came in within an hour or so, perhaps a bit sick that they had to be back in school, or still recovering from Thanksgiving. 

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Totally unrelated, a substitute teacher needed something out of his car today, and I volunteered to watch the second grade class for a few minutes. The class was watching some puppet version of The Lion King, but when they saw me, the chairs turned around to talk to me in the back of the class. Pretty soon, everyone was raising their hands to tell me their "This one time..." stories of being hurt and seeing a doctor. "This one time, my cousin Flea, he flipped his car..." 

No one saw any part of the movie while I was in there, but I couldn't help myself: second graders are a fantastic age of cuteness, old enough (usually) to know their name, young enough to still be (sort of) innocent. Aww! 

No news is good news

It's been a quietly busy week, the best kind there is in this job. The elementary schools have had minimum days all week for parent-teacher conferences, and without recess and lunch, the chaos of a day is considerably reduced through the lack of ice pack requests and the fact that my diabetics go home before their insulin is due. On top of that, today was a rainy day, and rainy day recess slashes the first aid work to nearly nothing. Though Time Bomb diabetic has been passed off to another nurse, I was at the school anyway on Wednesday, and said I'd take care of her. She checked her blood sugar before breakfast, ate breakfast, and then came to my office afterward to do her insulin and...wait for it...check her blood sugar again. There are only so many times I can explain the concept of diabetes to someone, and despite my best efforts, she didn't understand why I was basing her insulin dose off of her pre-breakfast blood sugar instead of the one she was showing me in my office. This incident is why she essentially has her own nurse these days, leaving me to thank my lucky stars that I'm normally too busy with my two elementary diabetics, including one that steals bananas for me from the cafeteria, to have Time Bomb.

'Tis the season to be off: after a four day week this week, we have all next week off, and then winter break is rapidly approaching after that. Happy Thanksgiving!

Say what?

Several weeks ago I had a parent in my office yelling at me because her daughter's had lice. (Because it's totally my fault, I go around planting lice in children's hair.) She threatened lawsuits, reporting my supposed negligence to the district office, etc. I didn't even write about it in this blog because such incidents have become commonplace over the last two years, and in comparison to Time Bomb diabetic...well, it's just lice.

Fast forward to today. Said parent stopped by my office to tell me her daughters have been lice-free for a few weeks now and "I'm sorry if I was rude to you." I refrained from saying, "Yes, in fact you were very rude" and instead told her, as I had several weeks ago, that I understand lice is frustrating and stressful to deal with. I don't think a parent has ever apologized for being rude, and this parent continued on to say she had been pretty stressed out (lice and a divorce at the same time) and was sorry for taking that out on me. I'm pretty sure my mouth dropped open and stayed so during this conversation, but at least I managed to stay on the chair.

It was a pleasant thing to happen on a Friday heading into Veteran's Day weekend, which will be followed by minimum days next week, which will be followed by a week off for Thanksgiving. Time Bomb diabetic is officially not my responsibility, she's another nurse's now, and screening season is winding down. Hallelujah, the tides may finally be turning.

Why why why... II

A kid came to me complaining a spider bit him at recess. I see a lot of spider bites, but they all have happened the night before, so I asked where he was that he was bit by a spider at school:
Bitten kid: "Well, I saw a spider web, so I stuck my hand in it..."
Me: "How about I get you some ice for it and in the future we don't go sticking our hands in the homes of animals?"
Bitten kid: "Yeah, I'm not going to do that again."

Again...what makes a child think that it would be a good idea to stick their hand in a spider web? I don't understand them.

Happy Election Day! My school is a polling place, and it's been lovely to see the teachers bring the students into the hallway to show them what a polling station is and explain what it means.