In honor of school nurses

May 08, 2009

Nurses Day and Week is more than a Hallmark Holiday

May 6th was National Nurses Day and marked the opening of National Nurses Week which ends on May 12th (Florence Nightingale's birthday). Another hallmark holiday? Or, maybe not. I vote for not.

I was talking to my daughter that it was Nurses day and we talked about the difference between nurses and doctors. I asked her what nurses she knows and the only nurse she mentioned knowing is the school nurse. Fair enough. I shared with her that her grandmother, and my grandmother, and my brother (her Uncle) are nurses. I suddenly felt ridden with guilt that I'd done nothing for all the nurses in my life when I got to thinking how much nurses really do. In particular how much nurses have done and continue to do for my children.

For several years now I've believed that the school nurse was out to get me. I began cursing out the school nurse in 2007 after a stint of sending my son home repeatedly when she claimed he had pink eye but he didn't. He later went home almost weekly for vomiting or diarrhea and I believed the school nurse was out to get me. Until, we switched him to a gluten and casein free diet and his tummy troubles all but disappeared. My conspiracy theory was that since he tends to be one of the more "difficult" children in his self contained autism class, they were trying to "ditch" the kid with behaviors and send him home. I know other moms have shared with me how their more severely autistic children conveniently were getting sent home from school on days where there was a field trip. We blame the nurse. For those of us who have children with religious and/or medical exemptions for vaccines, we become paranoid and think that every phone call from the nurse is because we are being put under a microscope.

Somewhere along the way, I seem to have lost perspective that the school nurse is just doing her; very inglorious, under-appreciated, and most definitely underpaid, job.

I'm sorry, School nurse. While I don't agree with sending a child home for "farting", or calling a mom of a child with Autism to tell them that they had diarrhea (its often an every day thing) - you aren't the archenemy. In fact, this year dear nurse, I owe you one. I want to give you a great big hug and a sloppy kiss, even... Ok, maybe that is going overboard.

I have mad love for my school nurse, yes - the same one who I have cursed out for 3 years. You see this year, the school nurse saved my daughter's vision. The New Jersey Commission for the Blind and Visually impaired in conjunction with the school nurses conducted vision screening on all children in my daughter's school and she failed. I was baffled because she had passed routine vision screens done at her pediatrician and showed no signs of having vision troubles. I found out that she had little to no vision in one eye and was only using one eye to see. This condition, amblyopia, is actually very common but if left untreated it will ultimately lead to blindness in the amblyopic eye. My daughter's eye was already considered "legally blind" without corrective lenses.

That day, I stopped thinking of the school nurse like an enemy and sent her a thank you note. I realized that the nurse is on my side and most of all, she is on my child's side.

I'm going on record that I'm indeed sorry for cursing out the school nurse.

New Jersey Moms Blog post by MaryTara. MT blogs her adventures in parenting two beautiful children on the Jersey Shore, life with autism & without it, the gluten & casein free diet, and vaccination choice issues at The Bon Bon Gazette and raising a child with amblyopia at Adventures in Amblyopia.