I Have a B.S. in Nursing

As you may or may not know, I will be spending my summer in the wilderness working for a camp. I did the same thing last summer. I know this year will be great because it is going to be better than last year and last year was stupendous. I will be the Program Director, which was also my job last year.

Usually my duties include
driving the bus endearingly named Big John
driving the van endearingly named The Van
planning theme weeks

(Rogue Spies and Private Eyes week. Secret Agents vs. Ninjas)

and generally making camp...well...interesting.

On this particular day last year I was at the check-in table when my boss informs me that Jay and Sean are both sick.

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*Welcome to "Logistics of Camp" with Marcie*

We have 11 cabins at camp. Cabin 1 through Cabin 6 are girl cabins. Cabin 7 through Cabin 11 are boy cabins. In each cabin there are two counselors and a maximum of ten campers. Jay and Sean are both assigned to Cabin 8. If Jay is at home with a parasite and Sean is in the Health Center with a bad cold, fatigue, and a cough, who is the adult supervision in Cabin 8?

Answer: No one

...yet.

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This is Andrew.

Andrew is a nursing student at BYU and was the health supervisor for camp last year. This means that while at camp he gives out medication during meals and at night when campers need their pills and checks the heartbeat of stuffed animals. This also means that he gets to sleep in the Health Center where he has immediate access to a toilet, shower, fridge, microwave, and a toaster oven -a far better accommodation than any cabin on site. This also means that if anyone ever gets hurt or needs to see the doctor, Andrew is the go-to guy. But let's be honest, here. Campers seldom need medical attention more than a band-aid so between giving out drugs, Andrew goes to archery or makes origami frogs or pretends to be James Bond or a Tiki Man or a cowboy. Really, Andrew has the best job in the entire camp. He never has to work.

So, if you need a male counselor for Cabin 8 when you are suddenly short-staffed, who do you use?

Answer: Well duh. The health supervisor, Andrew

You are probably asking yourself, "If the health supervisor became a counselor, who became the health supervisor?"

Answer: Yours truly.

When my boss notified me that I would be the health supervisor for the week I was so excited. I get to stay in the health center with my own bathroom (!!!!!) and suspected I would have loads of free time because half the time Andrew is down at archery anyway.

Boy was I wrong.

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*Welcome to "A Week in the Life of Camp Nurse" with Marcie*

Sunday night I came in to the health center to find a girl with a fever of 104. I thought to myself, "I'm pretty sure that when your fever hits 106, you're dead. This can't be good." So I put her in a cold shower in hopes to lower her temperature. I heard the water turn off and then I heard some splattering and some moaning.

Just my luck. She did the technicolor-yawn all over the bathtub.
Hot dogs. There is not a doubt in my mind she had eaten hot dogs.
With a lot of ketchup. Blech!

We sent her home that night.

Monday: The parents called us and told us that they took the girl to the doctor and she had swine flu.
Dang.
Consequently I bleached the entire camp.

Then there was a camper with a pesky cough/cold and since a similar pesky cough/cold has been swiping out counselors I took him to the clinic down in Kamas. On a happier note, Sean felt better so he became went to Cabin 8 but we decided to keep Andrew there as well so kids could "have some stability" or something like that.


Tuesday: I woke up to a counselor slamming my door open (can you slam a door open?) and yelling, "Marcie! Wake up! I'm coughing up blood!"

In my groggy state all I could think was, "I don't think I have a pill for that. Hmm...This can't be good. Let's go find Andrew." So we hunted down the legitimate camp nurse in Cabin 8 (who-true to nurse stereotype-came out in his scrubs) and he said it was nothing serious but we should make an appointment in Kamas.

But it was too early to call the clinic because they weren't open for another hour. So between the counselor coughing up blood and me calling the clinic I got a few other things to deal with...

A) This girl walks in with a stomachache and after prodding she tells me that she hasn't gone poo for three days. I tell her I don't have any laxatives but I'll get some for her later.
B) This boy (we'll call him Josh) came in with a bummed-out knee. I was out of ace bandages so I had to wrap it with a roll of gauze.

c) Josh's buddy Bobby said that he was experiencing some abdominal pain. He could only get to sleep when he was in the fetal position and the pain was pretty concentrated right here *points to right abdomen, about an inch below rib cage.*

So I radioed Andrew.

"Marcie to Andrew."
"This is Andrew. Go ahead."
"Where's your appendix located?"
"Lower right abdomen."
"What if it's the upper right abdomen?"
"Well if it's his appendix and you poke it, it will hurt more when you release."

So I poked it and Bobby said it hurt more when I let go. To make a long entry about six paragraphs shorter, I took the kid to the clinic, his dad picked him up, it turns out his mom is an internalist, she confirmed he had appendicitis and he got his appendix taken out that day.

The counselor who was coughing up blood got a prescription along with another counselor who was having some trouble breathing. I got some narcotics because I have bronchitis. (Don't worry, I asked if I could still drive Big John while on narcotics and the doctor said it was perfectly fine.)

Just when I thought that nothing else could possibly happen this week I came back to camp and this girl complained that a bug was in her ear.

"I was at archery and there was buzzing around my head and then there was buzzing in my head," she said.

I used Andrew's nifty ear-looker-inner-tool. Sure enough. She has a bug in her ear. We tried to flush it out with water and alcohol. It killed the bug but it was still in her ear. We didn't want to try and get it out ourselves because that could go terribly wrong. The clinic was closed by then and I wasn't about to take her to the ER for that...so we just let her go to bed with a dead bug in her ear.
Wednesday: Every Wednesday we split up the camp by age group and send them on hikes.

Before the hike: a counselor (Nick) came in with a slight fever, a cough, and a pain in his lung/rib. So we quarantined him. The constipated girl from yesterday came in and said she felt nauseous and had diarrhea. I told her that she SHOULD have diarrhea and then I gave her a pepto.

She barfed up pink stuff ten minutes later.

During the hike: Nick went to the doctor. He has pneumonia and will be out for the rest of the summer. Then a counselor radioed the camp director to tell her that Otis (the camp director's dog) had just been hit by a car. So the director left to save the dog and take him to the vet and then it occurred to me that I was acting Program Director, Health Supervisor, and Camp Director. That means I was the acting ENTIRE ADMINISTRATION STAFF.

Does that sound like a good idea to you???

Didn't think so.

After the hike: Jonah comes in with sunpoisoning/heat exhaustion. Guess what cabin he's in.

If you guessed Cabin 3, you're WRONG. The correct answer is Cabin 8.

After I babied Jonah all day with ice pack on, ice pack off, socks on, blanket on, blanket off, ice pack on, socks off, ice pack off, we decided that we couldn't stabilize his temperature so we sent him home with his parents.


You know that girl with swine flu who went home on the first day? Well she has a brother at camp: Jason.

In Cabin 8.

So we decided to check his temperature just in case.

Well that "just in case" turned out to be a good idea. His fever was 103 so we had his parents pick him up.
Thursday: This kid comes in with an ear ache first thing in the morning. But don't you worry, he was NOT from Cabin 8. He's from cabin 7. After 12 hours of him complaining of this, we sent him home with his parents.

Friday: Another male counselor got sick and somehow I drew the short stick and had to fill in for him, too. So I had the privileged of being a cabin counselor in addition playing nurse and still trying to make camp a Disneyland experience for everyone who didn't know what medical mayhem was happening behind the scenes. I was feeling pretty schizophrenic by the end of the day.

I think I went through enough that week to have been through all the hazing hoops of being a nurse.

You could say that I have a B.S. in nursing.

(B.S.....if you know what I mean.)

And you want to know the BEST part? The next week Andrew was back to being nurse and he was back to doing origami and pretending to be James Bond. I don't think he ever did clean up barf the whole summer.

I did it twice in one week.

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Epilogue:

Andrew and I are still fantastic friends. He teaches me nursing words like "spondylolisthesis" and "esopha pharyngoscopy".

It's too bad he won't be at camp this year. Bad things happen when Andrew isn't the health supervisor.