Camp Nurse (2 page)

Suddenly, something caught my eye on the road ahead. “Hey, guys, look at that!” Directly in front of our car, slowly making its way to the opposite lane, was a turtle with a wizened dinosaur face. I slowed down and pulled over to take a closer look. My kids were fascinated, their thumbs suspended over the keys of their games, the action on pause, as they watched and waited (and waited) for the reptile – or was it an amphibian? – to make it safely to the shoulder.

I thought about my kids. My older son, Harry, was quiet, serious, and painfully shy. I hoped camp might bring him out of his shell and boost his social skills. Max, on the other hand, was high-spirited, fiercely independent, and irrepressible. I hoped camp would give him the self-discipline and structure he needed. One thing I knew for sure: my kids were not going to merely read about the world as I had – they would
live
it, first-hand. If there were dangers involved, then so be it. I’ve always encouraged them to try new things and take risks – within reason.

As an adult, hearing my friends reminisce about camp, I’d felt envious, nostalgic for something I’d never even experienced: the gruelling canoe trips, the zany bunk-hopping and cabin raids, and the cozy scenes of sitting round the campfire making s’mores. My friends recall their camp days with loving wistfulness, falling into a reverie whenever that touchstone comes up:

“It changed my life. My camp friends are my closest, to this day.”

“I had my first kiss at camp … my first slow dance. He’s my husband now, and our kids go to the same camp!”

“The best was being a counsellor. Everyone knows you go to camp to get laid!”

“I lived for camp. Those summers were the best times of my life, the happiest.”

I loved hearing their stories, but I had to agree with one friend who said, “If you’ve never been to camp, you just don’t get it.” Yes, I wanted my kids to be campers, and as a camp nurse, I could vicariously fulfill my wish to be one, too.

I was pulled from these thoughts by cheers coming from the back seat of the car. The turtle had made it –
a good omen
, I thought. But as I drove on, getting closer to our destination, I began to worry.

For so many years as an
ICU
nurse, I had taken care of patients who had serious conditions, such as multi-system organ failure, septic shock, and respiratory failure. The stakes couldn’t be higher. When I had first considered the switch from the fast-paced environment of the hospital to what I imagined would be a laid-back, easy job, I had no concerns. Surely it would be a nice break from the intensity of the
ICU
, leaving me lots of free time for swimming in the lake, canoeing, and hiking in the forest. How hard could it be? Taking care of healthy children who had booboos, sniffles, and bug bites was a far cry from treating sick patients who had life-threatening illnesses. I had developed the typical, hard-bitten humour of nurses who toss off remarks like “any day my patient isn’t in cardiac arrest is a good day.” I wasn’t concerned about camp nursing because, after all, these weren’t
sick
kids. However, I did wonder if I’d have sufficient sympathy to offer those with everyday ailments. I realized I might have to recalibrate my “compassion-o-meter.”

And there might be a few other challenges at camp that I hadn’t considered. First of all I had no experience with pediatrics; I’d never taken care of children, other than my own. Also, at camp I’d be isolated and working by myself, without my
ICU
team to back me up. I began to wonder whether my skill set was suitable for camp. I knew what to do in the event of a cardiac arrest, but
I had never even seen a case of poison ivy. I could start an intravenous drip, measure central venous pressure, and analyze arterial blood gases, but I’d never removed a splinter or taped a sprained ankle. Surely I could learn these things on the job? As I turned off the highway and onto a quiet country lane, the road got quite bumpy. I felt as if the dark forest of trees edging the roadway was closing in on me. I gripped the steering wheel tightly and drove on.
You can do this
, I told myself.

Then I saw the sign for Camp Na-Gee-La. As we approached the entrance gate, I tried to ease my nervousness by imagining the great times awaiting us. I thought back to my conversation with Mike, the camp director, and was reassured by his words. A few weeks ago, Mike and I had had a long talk on the phone. He’d told me about the camp, focusing mostly on its socialist philosophy. He said that Camp Na-Gee-La’s name came from the Hebrew, meaning “let us rejoice.” Mike had been a camper there himself every summer since the age of eight. He explained how Camp Na-Gee-La was part of a youth movement, which meant it was governed by young adults. The parent council oversaw the finances and administration, but the day-to-day running of camp was done by the campers and counsellors. The parent council had voted that Mike be the camp director, and this would be his first summer in charge. He seemed eager to do a good job. He explained that it was a low-budget, no-frills camp modelled after the Israeli
kibbutzim
, or communes, of the ’60s, where everything was shared, including chores, decisions, and responsibilities. It was both Zionist and pro-Palestinian, left-wing politically, and completely secular, as in no religious affiliation. “Don’t worry,” Mike reassured me, “there’s no prayer hocus-pocus or anything like that.”

It seemed like an important point to him, but I didn’t feel one way or another about it. We were Jewish but not observant, so it seemed like Camp Na-Gee-La would suit me and my family just fine.

Mike told me more about their belief in the value of physical labour, living off the land, minimizing their ecological footprint, and “co-existing in a way that is respectful of the Planet.” It all sounded good to me. Camp Na-Gee-La attracted the children of some of the country’s finest artists, academics, and intellectuals, Mike said, “because of the way it inculcates humanistic values and promulgates a vision of equality and social justice.”

“So, Nurse Tilda,” he’d said playfully at the end of our conversation. “How about it? Are you in?”

I had taken only a moment to think it over. It certainly was flattering to be called Nurse Tilda. In the hospital, I was always called by my first name without any title. And I did admire Mike’s passion for his camp. Admittedly, my kids were still young for any
inculcation
or
promulgation
, but it didn’t seem that long ago that I had been young and idealistic, too. At forty-four years of age, I still felt young. Well, at least I was still idealistic. Though it scared me to think I’d be on my own without a doctor on hand and with the closest hospital a half-hour drive away, I reminded myself that I was an experienced nurse. I had handled many emergencies over my long career.
C’mon, you can do this
, I told myself. “Okay, I’m in,” I said.
Bring it on!

As I steered the car into the parking lot, I took a deep breath (of
fresh
air!) and readied myself for the plunge into The Great Outdoors.

Camp Na-Gee-La was situated on an irregularly shaped piece of land made up of hills and valleys. At its hilly centre was a flagpole, from which a path sloped down to the waterfront. The mess hall was on another hill, and the infirmary was located on the highest hill of all. By the time I finished dealing with Zack’s injury, it was late evening. Mike showed me to my new home, a room at the back of the infirmary. My kids would stay there with me for the night. Tomorrow, after all the other campers had arrived and camp officially began, they would join up with their cabin groups. I unpacked my things, organizing them on the wooden shelves provided, and tried to settle down my kids. We’d missed dinner, but I had brought some fruit and crackers with me, and we munched on those. They were excited but tired too, and soon fell asleep together on one of the two narrow cots in my room.

I sat down for a moment on the other cot to review some of my reasons for getting involved in this adventure in the first place. Camp fees can be expensive and I liked the idea of bartering my skills in exchange for them, but my real motivation was to get a ticket to the world of camp. It was too late for me to be a camper but this might be the next best thing. “Camp nurse” would also be my cover to spy on my own kids. I don’t think of
myself as an overprotective parent, but I admit I can get involved (too involved?) in my kids’ worlds. I am the kind of mother who knew the adventures of Thomas the Tank Engine, and those of his sidekicks, Percy, Henry, James, and Edward, too. During the Pokémon craze, it was not every mother who could rhyme off the secret powers of Charmeleon, Squirtle, and Blastoise, but I could. Now, at camp, I could be on the inside and get the scoop on my kids’ secret lives, while keeping a respectful, unobtrusive distance, of course. I could be a fly on the cabin wall. They would hardly even notice I was there.

Something else intrigued me about camp. I longed to learn the secrets of the successful campers. It was much easier for me to understand why someone might
not
like camp, what with the non-stop, exhausting activities, the noisy silliness, the bothersome bugs – not to mention the lack of books, solitude, and quiet time. I wanted to see for myself why so many loved it.

I went to check out the infirmary, down the hall. It consisted of a waiting room with a couch, a few plastic chairs, and a rattling old refrigerator. There were two other rooms, one with four beds for overnight patients and the other with an examining table and a desk. I took stock. There wasn’t much in the way of equipment and the supplies looked like they’d fallen off the back of the proverbial truck. I found a dusty stethoscope, an antique blood pressure machine that belonged in a museum, a bottle of Tylenol long past its expiry date, a box of Band-Aids, a few bottles of rubbing alcohol, antiseptic, and a mystery bottle, unlabelled. All in all, this was not enough to supply a decent first-aid kit, let alone provide for an emergency. There was no airway (a tubular device to assist with breathing), no oxygen tank, no iv equipment or intravenous drugs. I had no medications to treat a seizure, a cardiac arrest, an asthma attack, or anaphylactic shock. The only thing remotely amusing about this situation was an object I discovered while rummaging in the
drawer 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:

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 was
beginning to wonder if they did either. As camp nurse, was it my role to put an end to their fun? Probably. But it wasn’t much of a stretch to dial up my own inner teenager and remember what I was like. I, too, had loved to cut loose and be wild. A part of me wanted to join in on the fun with them, but reluctantly, I headed back to my cabin and slept for what seemed like a few minutes.