Marie is a School Nurse

I have been working as a school nurse for almost 2 months now and am quite comfortable with the role and with the paycheck.  I still get confused and overwhelmed occasionally, but I think i am doing a better good job.  My main job is to provide care for 6 diabetic children who all attend one Elementary School.  I am also the nurse for one of the preschools.  I spend my day checking each child's blood sugar levels 2-3 times and administering insulin, either through a pump or a syringe.  The children are adorable and really fun to work with.  I have been enjoying them greatly thus far, but it stresses me immensely when the kids have either high bg or low bg and it won't normalize.  Working in the nurses office has been pretty enjoyable for me.  I deal with a lot of bloody noses, scrapes and scratches.  Kids come in all the time with sore throats and stomach aches, most of whom I have seen several times.  There have been many bumps on the head and even a broken arm.  I checked a kindergarten class for lice this week and sent out letters warning of fifth's disease.  I have done several assessments for IEPs.  I am taking an audiometry course so I will be qualified for hearing screenings.  My main project this week was Immunization Reports.  Since I only cover one school, my boss decided that I should do all of the Immunization  Reports for the 8 elementary schools and 8 preschools in the district.  The reports were originally due today, but the deadline has been extended until next Wednesday.  WooHoo!!!  I did complete 14 of the 16 this week and only have 2 more to go.

I really enjoy cooking and gardening lately.  Four of us girls in Relief Society share a garden in the on campus housing.  At the beginning of the summer, we planted over 20 tomato plants and they are currently coming out my ears.  I dehydrated over 15 pounds of tomatoes in the last couple weeks (into some awesome sun dried tomatoes) and there are still plenty left.  Kathy also canned a bunch and split the bounty with us.  We'll see what happens to the rest.  We plan to turn it into a winter garden in the very near future.  I made pizzas a couple times this month...once with some awesome pesto sauce I whipped up.  I also made burritos, lemon pepper chicken, apple stuffed pork chops, mini apple pies, rosemary/sun dried tomato bread and a couple kinds of cookies.  I love good food: )