Camp Nurse Read Free Page A

while rummaging in thedrawer of the rickety old desk. It was a faded, cardboard disc from the 1950s called a first-aid wheel. Various injuries and ailments were listed around the perimeter of the dial. You could turn the dial and a little window revealed the treatment. I took a twirl and landed upon advice for “Choking,” positioned in between the medieval-sounding “Blood-Letting” and “Dyspepsia,” all seemingly equal slices of significance on the pinwheel pie:
    Loosen neckband. If object in throat, remove with finger. If child, hold upside down and slap vigorously on back. If measures fail, call doctor.
    There was no mention of cardiopulmonary resuscitation ( CPR ), but it probably hadn’t been invented when this once-useful tool had been devised. I put the first-aid wheel back in the drawer. It was a charming artifact but of little use to me.
    It was getting dark, but I stood for a few moments on the porch to get a sense of the lay of the land. The campgrounds seemed rundown and shabby, but surely it would look better in the morning light?
    That first night, lying on the other narrow cot in my new room, I couldn’t fall asleep. All I could think of was Zack’s dirty, bloody knee. I imagined it morphing into full-blown septic shock. I had seen minor wounds – even hangnails and paper cuts – develop alarmingly fast into raging infections that raced through the body at lightning speed, destroying every organ, tissue, and muscle in their way. A few of these cases had even turned out to be the devastating necrotizing fasciitis, or nec fash, as we nurses called it, generally known to the public as the flesh-eating disease. I’ll never forget one patient I’d taken care of who had a swollen, inflamed toe. Within hours the infection had spread up his leg into his groin. Basically, it would have been game over if he hadn’t been brought to the ICU , lickety-split.
    My clinical experience was mostly treating worst-case scenarios and catastrophes. However, at least in the hospital I could anticipate them and have everything on hand I needed. Here, I had a feeling things would be simply coming at me, and I’d have none of the monitors or ICU gadgets I relied upon to know my patients’ conditions and anticipate problems. My tool box was empty.
    Something else threw me: When I went to make notes about Zack’s injury, I couldn’t find a chart or medical records. There was no record about any pre-existing medical history, allergies, or immunizations. In fact, the camp should have had detailed files for every camper and counsellor, but I only found a few health forms and most were incomplete. The nursing credo of
not documented, not done
haunted me. This place was scaring me.
    I thought of all those inviting ads for camp nurses in the back of the nursing journals I subscribed to. “Have a fun-tastic, fun-nomenal summer with your kids!” they promised. The best was: “Get paid to have fun!” They had lured me in but now that I was here I felt out of my depth and way beyond my comfort zone. This place was more like a
danger
zone. What had I gotten myself into?
    I was still tossing and turning later that night when music started blasting out from the mess hall. I got up, threw on my clothes, and went out to see what was happening. I stood on the mess hall porch and peered through the window. It was Party Central in there! The counsellors were bringing down the house with a full-blown rave. Techno music was pouring out of a portable CD player and bodies were swaying and undulating to the pounding, hypnotic beat. On the table were bottles of beer and wine coolers.
    Two guys rushed in past me, arm in arm, shouting, “Let’s partay! It’s our last chance before the kids get here.”
    Were these counsellor-kids the ones going to be responsible for the camper-kids? When I was sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen, I definitely didn’t have the maturity to be a counsellor – and I wasbeginning to wonder if they did either.