Avalonian

A copy of an actual note from this morning with names deleted: Snowflake came to the office c/o lump on his forehead that hurt when he took the PARCC testing, and didn't want to take the test because he didn't want his head to hurt. No lump was visualized or felt by nurse. Student was advised that he could not be excused from testing due to a lump on the head. Returned to class. Avalonian RN

I became a nurse in 1988. My first job was on a medical floor in a teaching hospital. We did primary care nursing, as someone said earlier, 5-6 patients on the day shift. You had the same patient each time you worked until they were discharged. But we did everything for them from feeding them to baths to running them to xray, cath lab, etc., not to mention meds and everything else. We had our share of AIDs patients. Some of the nurses were scared to death of them, so others of us would volunteer. Yes, the smoking lounge...one for patients, one for staff. We wore no hats, but were required to either wear white dresses or pants with any nursey-like tunic. Most of us had the white hose and white shoes with the little blue hearts on the back. There was one nurse on our sister unit (onco) who bucked the dress code. She wore white fairy looking dresses, white shoes that curled up at the tips like an elf's, and had purple hair and black lipstick The management hated it, but since it was technically in compliance with the dress code there was nothing they could do. She was awesome!

I travel between buildings. One day, when I got to one of my schools, there was a tub of mucusy (sp?) nasty liquidy stuff sitting in the office. Obviously some kind of body fluid, most likely yak. I contacted the custodian, who was nice enough to swiftly dispose of it before some student got into it or someone bumped into it and spilled it. ( Kids are allowed in and out of the nurse office at that school, whether I'm there or not, and my office is not much bigger than a closet.) At the end of the day, a teacher came to me, demanding to know where her recycling bin was. A student had barfed in it first thing in the morning before I got there, so she decided to put it in my office. I told her a bin full of potentially infectious fluid had been taken by the custodian to dispose of properly, but...C'MON NOW!

The word "flaccid" always makes me giggle. For some weird reason.

I probably slather a few on, and spray a few around during my work day. Eeeeeee.

Prepuce. Prolapse.

Nurses in our district are never allowed to transport students. Although who can is determined by our district (administrators, resource officers, truancy officers), who actually will bother depends upon the individual school and administrator, and how they "interpret" the district policy. Some of our schools are awesome and right on it. Others...aren't.

I'm new here...but I love you guys!

I just signed up today to work in the ESY (extended school year) program for elementary and middle school. Four hours per day of feeding, tube feeds, caths, diapering, and lifting. Short hours, good money, lots of work. But it's a special kind of nursing. The teachers are great, the kiddos are special--each with their own story, and many of those stories help me to keep my own life in perspective. Nursing is great!

Okay, I'm new to posting here. But from a school nurse's perspective, how about "asthma pump?" Or' "I have to use it."