Camp Sabra Nursing

I have spent the last 3 days working at Camp Sabra.  This camp is directly across the cove from Uncle Ron and Aunt Carols house.  All my life here in Missouri, I have looked across at that beautiful piece of property, as a youngster I could hear the kids laughing and swimming.  I always wished that I could join them!  Well, I waited too long to join in on the fun, but I am now going to work several weeks in the Infirmary.  I will work 2 sessions of 14 days, 12 hours each day.  I am working my hiney sp? off!!!!  The clinic is severely understaffed this summer.  Most of the time, they have two parents that are Nurses or EMTs that work while their child is at camp.  It offsets some of the cost of this very expensive, elite camp.  But this year there are 4 weeks where the Clinic Manager is by herself.  So they have hired me to get all the medications delivered to all the children in the morning, lunch and evening.  Then Misty (the Manager) handles the bedtime meds as she stays at camp all summer. Between the 2 of us (there are supposed to be 4 nursing staff), we handle all the kids that meander in for all sorts of medical issues.  Most of the time, there is a volunteer physician staying at the camp.  When a medical issue is more serious or needs a Dr. order for medication, we just call him and he buzzes over from his cabin with a golf cart!  It is a very well run facility but amazingly, they are not using the clinic computer very much at all.   I love to piddle with Excel and Misty is excited that I am working on a way to label the medications more easily than just writing it all by hand.

The campers take day trips all over Missouri and also take several 3-5 day adventures like floating, camping in the open air and some of the older groups spend 2 of their weeks in Colorado.  The frequent traveling makes medication administration very interesting.  I spend a lot of time making sure all the kids have their meds packed up and ready for the trips, it also requires instructing the counselors in correct medication administration including the emergency meds like epipens etc.

The camp is staffed with counselors from all over the world, and several of the 300 campers are International also.  The language barriers often make diagnosing a little difficult but the Dr that has been there this week is fluent in many languages.  He is actually not Jewish himself.  He is from India but has lived in St Louis for his adult life.  His boys are also at camp while he is working.  He makes sure to get some fishing and relaxing done so that his time at camp is more like a mini vacation.

Well, my long day is making bed sound very nice.  So I am off to bed, Good Night!

A weight is lifted off my shoulders....

It was a good day....got the lab results and saw 2 docs. They agree that I am "stable" at this time. The iodine treatment did not kill off the cancer (bummer) but the suppression therapy has lowered the "cancer level" and they are happy that I am responding to it at this time. Now, they will just keep knocking it down as long as they can with the suppression therapy...so labwork regularly and docs every 3 months. The rest of the summer is mine! I do feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Savana and I celebrated with brunch at IHOP and a little shopping!

I splurged on a couple of boxes of tile and went to work on my bar area.  Tiled the floor and the wall below the bar.  Really snazzied (my own word, I know) it up and it fits better with the living room colors.  Drop by sometime and check out my project!!!