Yep, I am a crazy mom

It has been my week to fight for my kids. A little bit of me is glad that I shelter them from how crazy their mother can be. Another part of me wishes I had it in me to let them watch me unload on someone, that way they would never question how hard I am willing to fight for them. Any momma bear knows exactly what I’m talking about. I thought I had handled the issue with my son quite well but maybe I still had a little bit of it built up. It’s very possible she was overreacting when I was evicted from her office. It could be she just had a strong sense of self preservation and knew she crossed the line with a redhead. Let me break it down.

The School Nurse at my girls elementary school is a totally power freak. We have had issues for years with this gal. I love everything else about this school and have heard the same from many parents. She will get on a kick of sending every kid home for nothing and then follow it with a spell of refusing to let anyone know their kid was in her office. That is frustrating enough on its own but she HATES being questioned. She once told my step-daughter that her dad is an a**$#!@ (This isn’t heresy, she thought she had hung up the phone but missed the receiver. We heard her say it.) She was sending a 9 year old home for being flushed after recess. We weren’t arguing weather or not we would come to get her. We just wanted to know if the symptoms were bad enough that we needed to speed. Instead of telling us symptoms we got a lecture about her degree and a phone slam.

I have snuck over the counter meds in both my girls backs packs because I have been told many times that the nurse won’t give them unless she has a doctor’s note. Sorry chick, I’m not paying $100 (per child) for an office visit to get a note saying my kid can have cough drops for a cold. This time I didn’t feel right sneaking meds in. My youngest had come home from a friend’s house feeling terrible. Body aches and stomach ache but no fever, no GI issues.  I gave her some Tylenol and ibuprofen and had her take a warm bath. 45 minutes she was way better. The next morning she felt crappy again but we had just passed a stomach bug around the house. All of us had a few days of upset stomach followed by a few days of explosive vomiting. I wasn’t going to keep her home the first few days and burn her sick time if it wasn’t going to be eventful. I told her to go to the nurse if she felt bad again and I would call and tell her it was okay to get over the count meds. I wanted her checking in with someone in case it got bad sooner for her.

What a joke. I never got a call from my daughter. Her dad did but not me. I called to check in when I heard from him instead of her. Big surprise, she wouldn’t give her anything over the counter, wouldn’t let me talk to her and informed me that my daughter needed counseling. “kids don’t cry from stomach aches, she has something emotional going on” I think I know my kid better than a nurse that only sees her a few minutes a year. So I made a trip to the school.

I won’t go into all the details but I will tell you it was ugly. I had my daughter come to the office so I could check on her. She said her skin hurt; and her tummy and her head but wasn’t running a fever. I gave her a few otc’s right there in the hallway, gave her a kiss and asked if she could tough it out until after school. She said she could so I sent her back to class.  I then asked to talk to school nurse. Big surprise here too, instead of answering any question she pointed at the picture on the wall and told me how she graduated top of her class from the best medical school in the country with doctors and neurosurgeons and that she knows a little bit more about giving medications to a child than an MA. And if I had a license maybe I would understand that there are certain things she can’t do since she has a license to worry about. I held back the laugh but did ask if she hated her job since she was more worried about her degree than helping children. I did also remind her that if she was so worried about her license she would have gathered more information before making the decision it was an emotional issue versus physical. Blah blah, more heated debate. You can’t tell me how to do my job, Wah Wah, I’m not, I’m asking why you won’t answer my questions, BLAH BLAH BLAH I have more important things to do than call every parent over a stomach ache WAH WAH WAH really because you call my husband every time my step-daughter has a stomach ache BLAAAAAH!!! YOU JUST VIOLATED HIPAA!!!! Sorry honey, YOU just violated HIPAA. You left a whole pile of paperwork out on your desk where anyone walking in can read their protected information. You just got lucky and the top name also belonged to me so it really isn’t a breach. But all those other kids…….

She demanded to know the name of my supervisor which I gave more than willingly. I even asked if she needed the phone number. Instead she told me that my daughter didn’t need pills, she needed someone to care for her. That took balls to yell down the hall in front of an office full of witnesses. I was at the crying point of angry now.

So there I was, kicked out of the nurse’s office waiting for the principle to get a private room ready. The cute little ginger sitting next to me asked if I just yelled at the nurse. I apologized to him and told him that sometimes moms get a little upset when they are worried about their kids but I shouldn’t have argued in front of him. To which he told me, “It’s okay, my mom has yelled at her too. My sister got hit in the eye and there was blood and a bruise and the nurse didn’t even call her” I giggled a little. “I would be mad too” This kid would be perfect for those Chewy’s granola bar commercials. God he was adorable!

Things went fairly good with the principle. My daughter’s dad had just made it out of class so he met us at the school as well. (we rock at co-parenting)  We didn’t get empty promises, we didn’t get excuses. We got a heartfelt apology and that he would do his best. (Have I mentioned that I love 99% of the staff at that school.) And he reassured us that next year would be better since her contract was ending with that school.

The next day I got a very polite call from the school nurse. This time she did a VERY THOROUGH exam before calling. She doesn’t think it is an emotional issue this time since there are diminished bowel sounds on the left side. She was a little nervous when I asked to talk to my child but I wanted to make sure she hadn’t been treated the same way as the day before. I thanked the nurse for her call and got my girl an appointment that day. We made sure to get some x-rays for those “counseling issues” and now she is doing great. Just took a few more over the counter pills 😉

They is nothing quite like going a few rounds in a boxing ring to make you feel like a super parent.

And I’m not totally insane, as soon as I start telling anyone in the medical field this story they immediately interrupt me to ask “Was that Mrs (BLANK)?!” How does everyone in town know her so well??????