Editor:
I would like to urge the residents of Sweet Home to jump at the chance to have a health clinic at their high school. Please consider all students in this decision. I can guarantee that not all students come from two-parent, median-income, God-fearing homes. Many have no health insurance. Some have no one interested enough to seek medical help for them. There are those who will need birth control information and have no one at home with whom they can talk.
I spent 15 years working in the “health office” at the high school. I would like to relate some of the experiences I had there. I was employed as a secretary in that department and there was no nurse on staff. For emergencies or advice I had to rely on the poison control center, Pharmacists kind enough to answer questions and emergency room personnel.
I tended to a girl who had an appendectomy, returned to school and came in one day, ill and feverish. Her appendectomy incision had abscessed and it burst open.
One student put brake fluid in another student’s soda in auto shop. A student following others out to the P.E. field ran through the metal frame thing that football players use, lifted his head before he was through and nearly took the top off his head. A student came in several times complaining of stomach pains. I called her grandmother, and each time she would say “send her home.” Finally I suggested she take the girl to the doctor and they found her blood sugar was 500! One morning a student came in with labor pains. Her mother lived out by Scio and it was a nervous wait for her to arrive.
A teacher sent a student to me with the report that she had told the teacher her urine was brown. She was yellow from head to toe. She complained to her parents a number of times and they told her to go to school anyway. It took a counselor and the health department with Childrens’ Services to get her to the doctor. A student in shop class shot a nail through his middle finger with the nail gun.
Every day there are students in school with diabetes or epilepsy who can require special attention. We had a student run down the hall and put his arm through the window in the door. Luckily, a first aid instructor was in school that day and followed the blood to the office.
Many parents today are having a hard time taking care of themselves and the kids come second. Some girls cannot confide in their parents because they will get thrown out of the house or smacked with a fist if they say they are pregnant. Some parents have no parenting skills and some are stoned or drunk and their children need protection from this abuse.
Don’t let this opportunity to have a physician’s assistant or registered nurse at your school pass you by. All children deserve it and if your’s don’t need, it that’s great. Count your blessings that this is being made available to your community.
Pegeen Vorderstrasse
Lebanon