Exhibit A

Exhibit A: Example of why we need full time health care staff at all school sites. 

Friday was a minimum day at my middle school and I'd told one of my diabetics - Mr. Redhead - that I would see him at lunchtime, which was taking place at 12:30 instead of 11:47 as it normally does. I went to my middle school at lunchtime to meet him as I always do, except he didn't show up. I checked his folder in my office that we keep his logs in and found that he had come to the office and given himself his insulin at 11:42, just like he does every day...Except it was a minimum day, and he would have gone to PE at 11:42 and not lunch. 

I freaked. For all I knew, Mr. Redhead was hypoglycemic and passed out on the steps of the school somewhere. School had just let out, so through the swarms of students, I looked for Mr. Redhead. (It was like reading a Where's Waldo book, but way more pressure to find him.) No luck. I asked the secretary to page him over the loudspeaker while I called his dad, who said he thought Mr. Redhead stayed for lunch and agreed that his blood sugar was likely dropping. I searched the cafeteria, asked the secretary to page him again, and still he did not show. I called his mom, ready to bawl my eyes out and tell her I lost her child. She answered, thankfully, and said Mr. Redhead was sitting across the table from her eating his lunch. Phew! 

The secretary, as I was leaving, said, "Oh yeah, I saw him come in earlier." What?!?! This is the deal with secretaries: they cannot be nurses and secretaries. They are asked to be, but you cannot have a secretary fulfill her duties and meet the health needs of the students at the same time. Mr. Redhead didn't ask for help, and so they let him do his thing on his own, because they don't know the consequences. I do. 

Poor Mr. Redhead got a lecture about it from me today. He said he realized his mistake as soon as he entered it into the pump, and didn't know what to do...so he went outside and went to PE. We talked about the fact that he got lucky - his blood sugar had been high - but that this could have been a really serious matter. I gave him my cell phone number and asked that he call me if I'm ever not in the office when he is again, and also made him promise he'd talk to the secretaries if he needed to reach me. Before Friday's incident, I'd planned on talking to him about going independent like the doctor's orders say that he is capable of. He said before I could that he still wants to be supervised...I suspect his mom may have given him a similar earful about what went wrong on Friday. 

It was a learning experience for many that I hope to not have to repeat anytime soon.