Butterfly Sparks Designs

Monday, July 26, 2010

Veer Straight and Forget Not Where the Bacon Comes From.

Just finished up a week of camp nursing at the wonderful East Texas camp where I'm blessed to work each summer.

We work an 80 hour week, and every day we work two 7-8 hour shifts for 8 days.  It's exhausting to say the least, and I usually find myself in my bed with my dinner, unable to move for about 24 hours once it's all over.

So what makes it worth all those hours of hard work?

Well, it is a really unique setting to be a nurse.  I get to meet hundreds of sweet kiddos each week, and since it's a Christian camp, I get to witness all the essence of Jesus intertwining with my service to the little campers.  And Jesus + campers = awesomeness.

The kids were unusually funny this week, as were the coworkers, so I spent most of the week in stitches.  In fact, in all my pictures, I'm not just smiling, I am laughing with my mouth wide open :)  That's a good thing.

Here are some funny lines from the health center this week:

--"Veer straight," said one of the campers when explaining how to get to an activity.  I'm pretty sure to "veer" usually involves some sort of curve or turn, so to say "veer straight" was funny.

--"I'm pretty sure I'm gonna die with this bug bite," said one little camper.

   "Oh!  Don't say that!"  I said.  "In Jesus's Name, you will live!  A long life!" I replied.

   "No, I'm pretty sure my days are numbered."

   "Well," said my coworker, affectionately known as "Fuzzy."  "He's not just a 'the glass is half empty kind of person, he's a 'the glass is totally broken and shattered apart' kind."

--"Man, I wish we had some bacon for breakfast around here, I would LOVE some bacon this morning," said one of the counselors.

"Yeah, I know.  You'd think with all of the cows we have around this camp, we could easily get some bacon!"  (That might or might not have been said by a particular nurse, but I won't name names.  Even if said nurse was me, who might have momentarily forgotten that bacon doesn't come from cows.  It comes from pigs.  I try and regularly provide entertainment for the people.  It's what I do :)

---"I'm not good at knowing things," said one of our nurse assistants :)

---"I have a very large stomach ache," said one cute little pint-sized female camper.  "Oh yeah?"  I asked her.  "Yeah.  Do you have some of that Pop-Ice stuff?  I think that would make it feel better."  Pop-Ice popsicles have a way of curing many ills :)

Oh, the campers.

 I learned alot this week about how who you work with makes a pretty big impact on your work.  The medics I worked with this week were a barrell of laughs.  So no matter how tired we were, when you are laughing, you just don't care.  And when I work with the Medics, I always breathe easier, because since emergency response is part of our job, I know they will take those calls.  Those calls always give me the anxiety, because I haven't ever worked the ER as a nurse, and because I wasn't trained that way.  I have learned to manage patients once they are stabilized from an accident, but actually knowing how to make the decisions when they aren't always puts me on the edge.  I never had to worry about it this week, because I knew the guys had it covered.  Therefore, I could enjoy the health center work with alot more peace than usual.

So, the nurse survived camp one more time.  I counted up this weekend- after 4 summers as a camp nurse, this was my 15th week to serve in that capacity. 

It's been fun.

But now I will go recover for the next few days. 

And if I don't hear another person complain about their aching stomach, their turned ankle, their poison ivy, or their congested sinuses for awhile, I will be none too sad. 

Here's a nurse quote I found today, which applies to a great many things, actually:

"It is not how much you do, but how much love you put in the doing." Mother Theresa

I always knew Mother Theresa was smart :)

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