Camp Nurse (21 page)

Counsellors ran past my window shouting, “Wake up! It’s Midnight Madness!”

I ran to the flagpole. The children had been assembled, still in their pyjamas, dazed from sleep. The older ones were excited and seemed to know what was going on. We all looked up at a small propeller plane circling overhead. Suddenly, hundreds of leaflets were released and fluttered to the ground. Everyone raced around, grabbing at them, scrambling to collect them all. They were lists of all their names and teams! Clues and maps leading to buried treasure! Mysteries and puzzles to be solved! Prizes to be won! Coach Carson stood at the side beaming with pride. “We do Colour Wars right after Visitor’s Day but the kids forget and are always taken by surprise.”

The campers were led back to bed. A ferocious battle was about to be waged between all four factions – Orange, Red, Blue, and Green – and it would begin in the morning. Everyone was so pumped up I wondered how the counsellors were ever going to get them back to sleep.

Bright and early the next day, everyone was raring to go. The counsellors had transformed the dining hall into four colourful worlds: The Orange section was decorated in Looney Tunes, with Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, and Road Runner as the captains; Blue was covered in comic-book characters, caped crusaders like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman; Red was Disney, with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Winnie-the-Pooh; and Green was plastered with the Simpsons (Homer, Marge, and Bart). Breakfast was dispensed with faster than usual, including the Pill Patrol scramble, to allow the full-tilt, eighteen-hour day to get underway. The counsellors had planned every detail and activity and Colour Wars would be executed, right down to the second, like a military campaign.

Not surprisingly, no one showed up for the morning clinic. All discomforts were put on hold for such a thrilling day. Caitlin and I locked up, and I went out on my own to take in the action. Campers and counsellors alike were decked out in crazy costumes, waving scarves and banners in their team colours.

They started the day with the “cheer-off.”

“Let’s go gree-een, let’s go!”

“Blue’s the real deal! Yay, Blue!”

“ Yo – Orange talks the walk, walks the talk!”

“Red has the power! Red rocks!”

After each cheer, the team punched at the air, whooped, and hollered.

For the first time, I saw all the ages mixed together on each team. It was sweet to see the little kids trying to keep up with the older ones and the older ones adjusting their pace to accommodate them as they took them on scavenger hunts, ran relays and races, played touch tag, tug-of-war, and water polo in the lake. Later, the plans included the camp’s traditional buffalo stampede, treasure hunt, and Capture the Flag.

“Colour Wars is insane this year!” a kid yelled out as he ran past me.

“Yeah, it’s right off the hook,” his friend said.

A boy staggered along, huffing and puffing and clutching at his chest, pretending he couldn’t make it, though I could plainly see he could. “I’m gonna crash and burn.”

I was dreading the commotion in the dining hall that I assumed would be even more over-the-top that day. When it was time for lunch I popped a few pills myself to stave off a headache and headed over. Unexpectedly, I entered an oasis of peace and quiet. The Silent Lunch was a hallowed Colour Wars custom. However, I braced myself when I read on the schedule that after lunch was the infamous obstacle race (the one where “everyone gets hurt”). I knew where I’d be stationed the rest of the day.

That afternoon, Kitch and I worked together in the Medical Centre while Caitlin roved around camp with a walkie and a fanny pack chock full of disinfectant, bandages, and gauze so she could attend to minor injuries along the way. It was a steamy, hot day, so I was happy to stay in the air-conditioned comfort of the mc while I treated the steady stream of bumps, cuts and scrapes, twisted fingers and ankles. As the day wore on, kids with headaches and heat exhaustion started rolling in. By mid afternoon, the kids were lined up on the couch and the beds were full while I rested, iced, compressed (taped), and elevated arms and legs, and medicated the children attached to those sore limbs.

A boy lay on a bed, groaning after throwing up from the lemon-eating contest.

A counsellor was beside herself with disappointment because she’d lost her voice from screaming on the chant-a-thon and wouldn’t be able to lead her team.

A thirteen-year-old girl was in severe pain. Her likely fractured arm had been splinted and she was waiting to be driven to the hospital for an x-ray and probably a cast. She was moaning
in pain because she couldn’t swallow painkiller pills and was slowly sipping a yucky liquid substitute, trying to get it down without gagging.

A
CIT
boy had a possible concussion from a whack over the head during a mud-wrestling contest (he couldn’t remember the injury, which was worrisome). He stayed under my close watch so I could check his vital signs and neurological status every hour.

Another camper lay on a stretcher recovering from the effects of unnecessarily injecting himself with his epinephrine syringe. What he had thought was anaphylactic shock was only extreme excitement during Human Battleship on the sports field. He’d panicked and given himself a shot in his thigh. His heart was racing and his blood pressure elevated, so I kept him for observation.

In the midst of all of this, a pack of sweaty kids barged in and rushed at me, begging for tongue depressors. I didn’t have a chance to ask what they wanted them for or why they all had miniature corncobs stuffed up their nostrils, making them look like charging bulls. As I handed over the booty, an ominous call came on the walkie.

“I need help! Someone, help!”

It was Trish, the kitchen supervisor. Her voice was trembling.

“Hi, Trish, it’s Tilda. What’s wrong?”

“Come quick … now!”

“Can you switch to medical and tell me what the problem is?” (That was the channel we used for confidential information or to avoid camp-wide hysteria.)

“Please, just get here! Now!”

Gotcha!
I grabbed the “crash box” – not the everyday first-aid kit. I had a feeling I’d need it. I’d put this box together shortly after my arrival at camp so it would be ready in an emergency. It contained plastic airways to deliver breaths in the event of an obstruction or respiratory arrest, and face masks and tubing to
administer oxygen. There were lots of syringes and resuscitation drugs such as epinephrine, intravenous equipment with large-bore needles to run large amounts of fluid quickly into big veins, bags of glucose and saline, and large, thick bandages.

Kitch was out somewhere examining a child so I was on my own. “I’m coming,” I yelled into the walkie. Just then, Eric dashed in and grabbed me. “Let’s go!” he shouted. I jumped onto his
ATV
waiting outside the door and we barrelled off to the dining hall.

In the kitchen, I walked into what looked like a murder scene. Blood was everywhere: splashed against the tiled white walls, splattered on the floor, sprayed on the white aprons of the kitchen staff and head chef like some abstract paint job. They were standing around, speechless, paralyzed with fear and shock, as a young man lay on the floor writhing in a pool of blood that streamed out from his hand – what was left of his hand – hanging off the end of his arm. He was a fifteen-year-old kitchen worker who had been cleaning the meat slicer when it accidentally got turned on.

For one infinitesimal second, I paused, playing a mind game. Even after all of these years of dealing with emergencies, I sometimes need to calm myself down and I have a little technique that’s very effective.

This is only a pitcher of cherry bug-juice spilled onto the floor
, I told myself.
It’s some joke, a Colour Wars prank from the Red team. These crazy kids are playing tricks on me!

That second was all it took for me to come to my senses and take charge of the situation. I pulled on two pairs of vinyl gloves and rushed to the boy, careful not to slip on the slicks of blood. By the bright colour I knew that arteries had been severed. Parts of each of his fingers were missing, but the thumb hung on tenuously by a piece of fibrous tissue. Chunks of fingers were strewn across the floor. I grabbed a dishtowel and made a tourniquet on his arm. I grabbed a roll of paper towel and slapped that on the
wound. Crouching beside him on the floor, I held his arm up, above the level of his heart to divert blood as much as possible from pumping out. All the while I shouted out orders, one after another, to the crowd gathered there.

“Someone, bring more towels!

“Buckets of ice, too!

“Call Kitch! Call 911 for an ambulance!

“Get the oxygen tank from the mc!”

I pointed at a gawker. “You! Gather up whatever parts of fingers you can find and put them on ice.” He looked horrified but did as I told him.

The boy was now cold and clammy and had begun shivering. “Bring blankets!” I called out. The roll of paper towel was drenched in blood. Quickly, I replaced it with a new one.

“Am I going to die?” the boy mumbled.

“No!” I told him firmly. “You’re going to be just fine. We’re taking care of you.”

I kept his hand raised high and maintained pressure on the wound, not even releasing it to check it. I kept talking to him, asking if he could feel what was left of his fingers. He couldn’t. He had no movement or sensation in his arm. His pulse was fast, weak and thready, getting more difficult to palpate: I got someone to take over applying pressure, while I started an iv in his other arm and then opened the clamp to let the fluid pour in to stave off hypovolemic shock caused by such massive blood loss. Kitch arrived and nodded that I was doing everything right. Soon, the ambulance came and then the paramedics took over. By this point, the boy had lost consciousness and I realized I didn’t even know his name. Trish told me it was Tom Adams. I looked at him lying on the stretcher, alone and without family or friends. I felt like a critical care nurse again, and all I knew was that I had to be with my patient and see him through to safety. I was tempted to jump into the back of the ambulance
with him but decided I’d better drive my car there so that I’d have a way to get back to camp later.

In the emergency department the doctors and nurses transfused him with three units of blood. They prepared to take him into surgery to get the bleeding under control, but were also making arrangements for him to be transferred to Toronto for highly specialized surgery to re-attach his fingers by a top expert. I could hear the whirring of a helicopter on the hospital landing-pad, waiting to fly him there.

“I’ll call your parents,” I told Tom, who was now more alert after the transfusions and the fluid resuscitation but still groggy from painkillers.

“Don’t got no parents,” he mumbled. “Mom’s dead and Dad’s in jail.”

“Who should we contact to let them know what happened?”

“I’ve an uncle but he don’t like to be disturbed.”

“What’s his number?” I pulled out a piece of paper and a pen.

“He don’t have no phone or nothin’ like that.”

“Well, give me his address and I’ll go and tell him.”

Instead of an address Tom gave me directions that involved a country road, a turnoff that was a “fair stretch” past a motel, a left at a tall red pine tree, and a right at a row of cedars. I got all that down just before he dozed off. I called the camp to tell them that I was going to track down Tom’s relatives, but no one was picking up because they were probably still busy with Colour Wars. I left a message on the answering machine and went to my car.

I drove along the single-lane highway and was soon on that rut-filled dirt road that Tom had described. It seemed to lead nowhere. After a few minutes, I was so far off the beaten path, there was no one around to ask directions, no gas stations or pay phones. My cellphone wasn’t picking up signals, and I was getting nervous. Eventually, after turning past a row of some
trees, I stopped at a shack with a sagging porch. A grizzled man in bib overalls over his bare chest emerged. He stared at my car with suspicion. I got out and walked toward him. A woman came out on the porch and stared at me. Two naked toddlers were playing in the dirt. The man grunted, yes, when I asked if he was Tom’s uncle. I told him about the accident but he showed no reaction. I left, shocked at what I had seen.
How could I have been unaware of such a terrible situation that existed so close to home? No one should have to live like this
, I thought, as I drove back to camp.
A nurse should know about this!

As far back as Florence Nightingale, nurses have known how poverty causes illness and higher mortality rates. They understand the health effects of inadequate housing, sanitation, nutrition, and hygiene, and championed their reform. Tom’s family was way off the grid and far beyond the protection of our social safety net. They had no running water or electricity and no access to healthy food, proper housing, health care, or education. How did they cope with our severe winters? What did they do when someone got sick or injured, like Tom? I had never come up close and personal with a case of such extreme deprivation. What a huge divide existed between the two sides of the camp’s kitchen counter.

“Where
were
you?” Wendy pounced on me when I returned. I was so relieved I’d found my way back to camp that I’d completely forgotten they’d be wondering about me. Coach Carson joined her and said how worried they’d been, but they both sounded way more irritated that I hadn’t been there to help on the busiest day of the summer. I explained what had happened, assuming they’d understand.

“You spent all day with a kitchen staffer and left one nurse all by herself to care for eight hundred campers?” Wendy said.

“How irresponsible! You jeopardized the safety of everyone at camp. Where were your priorities? What were you thinking?”

“That a boy needed me. I couldn’t leave him. He’s only fifteen.”

“He’s a hired worker. He’s not one of ours. Your responsibility is to the campers under your care, to the parents who have paid us to keep them safe, and to us, your employers. Pills were missed at lunch and at dinner – Caitlin couldn’t handle it all by herself. The mc is packed with kids who need your attention. You better get in there right away.”