Camp Nurse (15 page)

Later, Kitch called for the report. Jared had suffered a significant spinal cord injury. He didn’t return to camp that summer, but I did hear through the grapevine that he made a full recovery, both to health and to waterskiing.

As I assessed the patient and worked to stabilize him, Kitch had backed me up by taking in the bigger picture and making the decision and arrangements to transfer him out of camp to a medical centre for treatment. It all went so well – and had a positive outcome for the patient – because we worked as partners.

Most afternoons were quiet and uneventful and I went either to my hip hop class, down to the lake for a swim, or succumbed to the lure of a blissful nap on my bed with the wind whistling through the pine trees outside my window.

Caitlin and I took turns being on call and carrying the walkie-talkie. It crackled noisily throughout the day, and occasionally at night, with general camp chatter, most of which I ignored. But one afternoon I heard, “Is there a nurse on the walkie?” I reached for it on my hip and pressed the talk button.

“It’s Tilda. I’m here.”

“There’s a problem at the waterfront. Can you come, like, now?”

I grabbed the spinal board, though there was one there too, plus a first-aid kit. I’d need a lot more than what was in this box if it was a true emergency. The potential for danger at the waterfront was immense. When I got there, a crowd had gathered around a tall girl stretched out on the dock. It was Samantha, the girl I’d seen sitting under a tree during the swim test. She was shivering in wet clothes, trying to sit up, with two counsellors on either side helping her.

Her swim instructor and I stepped aside to talk. “It’s been a week and she wasn’t going in,” she said. “Everyday, it was a different excuse. She had her period, a cold, a stomach ache, a headache. She couldn’t find her bathing suit. I don’t know what her problem is, because she’s an excellent swimmer. So, I gave her a little nudge, to get her in, and she panicked. It looked like she was going down, so I jumped in and pulled her out. She used her puffer because she says it’s an asthma attack.”

I kneeled down to examine Samantha. Her breathing was rapid. I pulled out my stethoscope and listened to her chest. It was clear of wheezes but her heart rate was only forty-five beats a minute. She was too weak to walk, so we carried her to the Medical Centre. I put her in bed and covered her with blankets. On her health form, Samantha’s mother had described her as a picky eater who had been recently hospitalized for “extreme weight loss.” No baseline weight was recorded, but it didn’t seem appropriate to weigh her now in this fragile state. In a weak
voice, she told me she didn’t like camp food – “too many carbs.” When I rolled up her sleeve to take her blood pressure, I saw that her arms were thin sticks, covered in goose bumps. I helped her into the dry clothes her counsellor had brought for her. Samantha sat listlessly as I lifted her top. I gasped in shock at what I saw. Running across her abdomen and upper arms was a crisscross of horizontal slashes. Some were fresh, others older. It looked like she had been violently attacked. It took me a few long moments to register the fact that Samantha had deliberately done this to herself. “Why?” I had to ask.

“I have to. It makes me feel better.” Her voice was barely audible and her teeth were chattering. “It expresses how I feel inside.” She looked away a moment, then directed a saddened gaze back at me. “Please don’t tell anyone,” she begged, and when I couldn’t promise her that, she looked so disappointed. “Well, then, I guess I can’t trust you. It doesn’t matter; I can’t trust anybody.”

“Do your parents know about this?”

“There’s only my mom and I can’t tell her because she makes me feel worse. Grandma and Grandpa don’t need to know. Mom doesn’t want them upset because, you know, they’re not getting any younger.”

Samantha didn’t want Kitch to examine her. “He’s nice, but it’s embarrassing.”

“I understand,” I said, but I didn’t really understand a thing except that Samantha was not well enough to be at camp. “Do you want to be at camp?”

“If I go home my mother will make me go back to the hospital. It’s better if I stay here.”

I spoke with Kitch. He explained that some troubled young people use this self-abusive behaviour to substitute one pain for another and to make their distress visible. He felt that camp was a haven for Samantha, a better place for her than in her unhappy
home life with an abusive father, who was now out of the picture, and a self-absorbed mother, who was in total denial about her daughter’s distress. “I know the mother,” Kitch said. “She travels a lot and won’t be agreeable to taking her home.”

That was it. Samantha was staying at camp, but I didn’t believe it was the right decision.

Camp Carson had an on-site professional photographer and a videographer. They strolled around camp with digital cameras and video cameras, taking still shots and video clips of campers involved in activities. At the end of each day, they uploaded the images onto the camp Web site for parents to view at home. I started receiving calls from parents once they’d had a peek into their kids’ world.

And the photos were not the only things drawing responses from the parents. I knew the letters from the campers had arrived at home when the phone started ringing off the hook and my
answering machine filled up. One mother called to complain that her child wrote only one line in her letter home: “Camp sucks.” “Can you find out what’s going on and get back to me?”

Another mother had a worse problem. “My son hasn’t sent me a letter, not even one!”

“That’s a good sign,” I tried to soothe her, “they
always
write when they’re unhappy.”

In a recorded message, an irate father informed us that his daughter must have snuck her cellphone into camp (she’d handed over one before boarding the bus but kept a spare one hidden) and racked up a bill of over three hundred dollars of text messages to her boyfriend in the city. “Take her phone away,” was the terse message.

“The parents don’t seem to realize how well their kids are doing,” I said to Coach Carson.
Well, most of them
, I thought.

“They’ll soon get a chance to see for themselves. Visitor’s Day is only two weeks away,” he said, but he didn’t look too happy about it.

The photographers roved around, snapping shots of happy children playing on the beach, sailing on the lake, making clay pots, and – the best photo op of all – sitting around the campfire. Needless to say, no pictures of Wayne’s fearful swim test, Alexa Rose’s tearful misery, Wesley’s oozing impetigo sores, nor Samantha’s self-mutilation made an appearance on the Web site photo gallery. The unhappy few were not represented. The vast majority of the campers were having a fabulous time. Everywhere I looked I saw smiling faces. Everywhere I went I heard the sounds of joyful laughter, the light-hearted banter of voices, and enthusiastic singing – even a group of kids bellowing “Stairway to Heaven” as if it were a sporting cheer. (This song was going to be ruined for me if I kept coming to camp!) When they were physically active or creating something with paint, clay, or string, the kids were content.

But if you spent each day as I did, attending to the handful of children with minor complaints, who were therefore temporarily miserable, or the even fewer individuals who were desperately unhappy (possibly at home, too?), you might forget that most kids loved camp. As a nurse, my radar zoomed in on the unhappy ones, such as Alexa Rose who now cried throughout the day (no longer just at night) and begged to go home. Wayne didn’t say
as much, but his sad face told the same story. Max said the other kids picked on Wayne and that he cried himself to sleep at night. There was also Hailey, a fourteen-year-old whom I hadn’t yet spoken to but had certainly noticed around camp in her black clothes and dark, heavy makeup, a look that was in stark contrast to the other girls’ bright, candy colours. Her counsellors told me she hated camp and was threatening to run away.

But unhappy didn’t always mean homesick. Samantha, for example, had problems that went way beyond homesickness. Kitch, Coach Carson, and Wendy agreed she wasn’t well but weren’t as concerned as I was.

“We’ve been through this nonsense with Samantha before,” Wendy said. “It’s pure attention-getting behaviour. Princess Diana was a cutter, too. She used a lemon peeler.”

She was so matter-of-fact that I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. How could they be so casual about it? The only thing that put my mind at ease somewhat was that Samantha had a tight bond with her counsellor, who promised me she’d keep a close watch on her. That was reassuring, but I saw that Samantha was too weak to participate in most activities. She stayed on the sidelines and hardly spoke. When she did, it was in a whisper and with downcast eyes. I tried to connect with her but she offered barely audible responses to my attempts at conversation.

Meanwhile, the daily routine continued. Pill Patrol still delayed the morning clinic and put us behind in paperwork, charting, and answering the growing number of phone and e-mail messages from parents. Coach Carson tried to help out by driving me around in his golf cart in hot pursuit of kids who missed their breakfast meds. He was like the merry host of a big summer party out on a “meet and greet.” He loved this opportunity to ensure everyone was having fun, and loving camp. He knew most of his “guests” by name, including their nicknames. He knew who had portaged or soloed a canoe in Algonquin Park and who had
gotten up on water skis for the first time. He knew all about the
CIT
boys’ recent late-night raid on the
CIT
girls’ cabin.

“Don’t be pulling any pranks tonight,” he warned them in mock sternness as we passed by. “Tonight I’m on patrol duty and I’m not going to let you off easy. I’ll make you do a hundred push-ups if I catch you out of your cabins after lights-out.”

As we drove along on the bumpy ride in the golf cart, he shouted out greetings to children he saw along the way, especially, it seemed to me, the ones he deemed exceptional campers, such as the athletic, popular, talented ones, or simply the happy-go-lucky, non-complaining, content ones.

“How’s it going, Blake?” he called out to one boy as we drove past and waved.

“Camp’s a blast, Coach Carson!” Blake grinned and waved back.

“I love that kid! He’s so
easy
.” Coach Carson shook his head in admiration of a successful camper like Blake who confirmed all he believed about camp’s ability to bring out the best in children.

I admired the happy campers, too. By then, I had a pretty good idea of my own what made a happy camper. Happy campers felt they belonged; they didn’t question their membership in the group. They never held themselves back or apart and moved with the pack. They loved to be silly and revelled in (and often contributed to) the cacophonous noise. These extroverts adored (and wholly participated in) the relentless activity from morning to night, and didn’t mind one bit the lack of personal space, privacy, or downtime. The happy campers never yearned to be elsewhere or to be doing anything other than exactly what they were doing. They knew how to find their place and fit in.

As part of my ongoing field study of the happy camper, I asked a group of boys from Harry’s cabin what they liked about camp.

“I don’t like camp,” said one boy with an uncharacteristically grave expression. He was the joker who had kidded me about my “wenis.” Then his face broke into an enormous grin. “I love, love,
love
camp! I
live
for camp!”

“Camp has made me who I am,” a boy, all of ten years old, solemnly told me.

“Camp’s, like, the only place where I can be myself,” another boy said. “Oh, sure, there are rules and stuff, but it’s nothing like at my parents’
gulag
.”

Around about the middle of the second week of camp, as I was jostling alongside Coach Carson in the golf cart on Pill Patrol, I decided to ask him about
unhappy
campers, such as Alexa and Wayne. “Aren’t there some kids who aren’t cut out to be campers?”

“I consider it a personal triumph to win over a camper,” he said with missionary zeal. He waved to someone and gave him a thumbs-up about something.

“Do you think every child can become a happy camper?”

“Every child can be turned around.”

“I’m beginning to think there are a few kids here who shouldn’t be here,” I persisted.

“Nonsense! What’s not to love about camp?” He seemed uncomprehending. Either he wasn’t seeing what I saw or just didn’t want to acknowledge the downside of camp.

“But what’s the benefit of making a miserable kid stay? Who wins?”

“It teaches a child the value of never quitting, of never giving up.” He stopped to high-five a camper – “Hey there, D-Bomb!” – then turned back to me. “Think of the words of Winston Churchill: ‘Never,
never
,
NEVER
give up.’ Every child can succeed at camp.”

“There are a few
really
unhappy kids here and I still can’t see the purpose –”

“Well, their parents see a purpose,” he snapped, beginning to get irritated. “A child who goes home will always regret it and look upon it as a failure. If children leave, it is
very bad
for their self-esteem.”

Coach Carson had a vested interest in keeping every kid at camp. As for the parents, there was no question that the vast majority wanted their kids to stay: that was the plan, and it was what they’d paid for. Summer vacation was long, and many, if not most, parents worked and needed to keep their children safely occupied. Parents also needed time to themselves in the summer, to recharge their batteries.