As you all know, I have been dealing with a very difficult, non-compliant mother of a Type 1 diabetic. He was finally able to start school yesterday, but there are a lot of issues going on. Mom is determined he come to our school vs. his neighborhood school. Our school hours are 7:30-4. No nurse after 1:30. His old school is 8:15-1:45, 2 blocks from home. Mom wants him to take the bus to and from school, so he would be getting ON the bus at 6:30 am and get OFF at 5:15 pm. There is no bus monitor so if he got into trouble, things would go downhill quickly. His grandmother who has been significantly involved confided to us yesterday that she has almost called CPS on her daughter (the kid's mother) a few times b/c she has not done what she is supposed to do for him. She also said she has lied on several occasions to the doctors and nurses. Based on the several failed meetings last week, I am pretty sure there will be some non-compliance issues. He also showed up for his first day of school having not eaten breakfast!!!! So grandma runs out and buys him DUNKIN DONUTS!!! Of course his mid-morning BS was 316!
Mom agreed that she would bring him in the morning and pick him up when we spoke, but then went behind my back to try to make bus arrangements. Luckily the bus coordinator came and asked me what the deal was. We are not denying him the right to ride the bus, but he just started yesterday and we need to make sure he is safe and also make sure that we have a plan in place for the bus. Right now we have no monitor and we are working on that.
So now for why I am annoyed/offended...mom told me to call the nurse at the diabetes clinic to discuss any issues/questions I had about his care and that she was happy to talk with me. So I just called to essentially get a feeling for their experience dealing with the family (compliance, etc.) and also to make sure they were aware that there is no one to administer glucagon in an emergency for the last 3 hours of school, or on the bus. I want to know if they really think a 9 1/2 hour school day plus an extra hour on either end of that is safe and ok for him b/c mom doesn't seem to think it is an issue. I told her about the last week and a half I have spent running around trying to plan/coordinate and mom failing all the meeting and appointments, not bringing in the paperwork I needed, not providing the keytone meter, etc. and asked if she had a similar experience since they have known them for a year. So the nurse sort of hufs and says "I don;t think you seem to appreciate the fact that this mother is parenting a child with a chronic illness and will be doing so for the rest of his life. So you questioning how she is managing him and his illness is not your place". I was shocked! Isn't our job during the school day to make sure our kids are safe? Isn't it my responsibility to make sure that he is being protected from bad outcomes from his diabetes if they are preventable? Maybe it was her tone, which was extremely condescending, like I am "just the school nurse and who do I think I am". I calmly told her "Yes, I absolutely can agree that this mother has a long struggle ahead of her, but I am concerned for her son if he is arriving having not been fed, eating grapes, fruit gummies and chips for lunch and being put on a bus for 45 minutes after a 9 1/2 hour school day. If you have advice that would be helpful in dealing with this family to put the safety needs of the child first I would greatly appreciate it". She then just hufed again and said she would have the "other" nurse call me later.
Am I wrong to be offended? I have seriously invested hours of my time over the last two weeks training staff, preparing the school and classroom and setting up meetings with this mom which she has failed all but one.
Anyway, thanks for reading if you made it this far. I am just exhausted and feeling like no one gets how much we as school nurses do for our chronic kids.
