Duly noted

When it was over 100 degrees outside and I was inside my office roasting with a very poor functioning a/c unit, I didn't consider the converse. Weather.com shows me it is 45 outside with a "feels like" of 39 degrees. It is my scientific opinion that it "feels like" 39 degrees in my office too. I'm going to have to start wearing long johns to work.

Also, just overheard in the hallway: "I farted." Kindergarteners are so cute.

TY

I've been uncomfortably surprised by the number of Christmas cards I have received at work, mostly due to their religious intonation. I work for the government, can't we keep this stuff away from work? Anyway, one in particular made me smile: "Nurse Erin - Thanks for taking care of our kids!" Signed by the principal. I don't think the principal at my middle school even knows my name, and this is the second time I've had a handwritten note of appreciation from this one. There's a reason I make an effort to be here two full days a week.

Bon voyage

My first semester as a school nurse comes to an end today, and I’m ending it sick, exhausted, and optimistic. It’s been a real shock to work with the clientele that I do, a population drastically different than anything I encountered growing up. Unlike the nurse on the good side of town, who laments to me the way parents detail the differences between tree nuts and peanuts to her, I have been yelled at for interrupting someone’s day when I call home at 10 a.m. to find out the severity of a nut allergy listed on an emergency card. I have mailed home over 50 hearing and vision referrals and have only received follow-up evaluation notice once. More come back as a “return to sender” because they’re no longer on the address listed on the emergency card (that was just filled out in August) than that. So few come back that I finally stopped keeping a list of what I’d mailed out; it’s too depressing. I’ve learned I’m expected to know everything, and I’ve learned it’s not the end of the world when I don’t.

!!!!

This morning at my middle school, the cutest little trembling sixth grader entered my office. He told me he's in the AVID program - I'm still not exactly sure what it is, but I think the "good" kids are in AVID - and they've been assigned to ask "someone like a doctor or something" to talk to the AVID class about their career. I don't have a clue what that entails or what to say, but sign me up! How sweet! 

It almost makes up for the fact that my office has an overpowering stench of dead rats in it. Apparently maintenance figured out there was a major rat problem above the ceiling and poured a bunch of rat poison. I can say it killed them for sure, and the odor is permeating the buildings while they consider how to remove the dead animals. Yay.

My reputation precedes me

This weekend, 140 miles from work, the guy at the ski rental counter recognized my address and asked what I did for a living. "I'm a school nurse," I said, "I work in the ghetto." I know there are worse neighborhoods in the world, but for most people I encounter in the real world, it's fair to say that about my schools. He asked the name of the middle school, and when I told him, his eyes lit up with recognition. He said that he got mixed in with the wrong crowd growing up, and that was the school the troublemakers attended. As he adjusted the bindings, I could tell he was still thinking about what I do and where... "So you must get a lot of fights, huh?"

Yep.

What we've got here is a failure to communicate.

Perhaps this is just a sign of my aging, but seriously, where are kids’ manners these days? When kids come in demanding an ice pack forgetting their p’s and q’s, unless there is an active emergency, I remain at my desk and tell them I can’t hear them.  Nobody’s teaching manners at home, so I try to teach them while I still can. The other day I had a sick girl already on the cot when a boy entered and I said, “What can I do for you, sir?” Suddenly the girl had energy, shot up and screeched, “You should have called me lady! You called him sir, that isn’t fair!” Excellent attention to detail, young lady, but she quieted down when I reminded her she was sick… and that she hadn’t addressed me as ma’am, either.

This week I saw child restraints for the first time. The kid was screaming so loud I began to wonder if I could later file for workman’s comp when I become hard of hearing because of it while he was being pinned by a resource teacher. Something had set him off, and after he spit in several kids’ faces and bit his teacher, they caught him for fear of further harm and destruction and brought him into my office. Twenty minutes later, he finally exhausted himself to the point of silence. All this, and the kid is only in first grade. Imagine what problems he has to come. 

You know you're a nurse when...

Having a student puking into the trash can in your office doesn't faze you - or detract from the delicious apple munching experience you're having at the moment.

What's gross anymore? I don't even notice.