by Tilda Shalof
Yes, wow, by all means!
In the letter to parents that accompanied the brochure, the directors stated the camp’s philosophy: “Each child is unique and special. We will do everything possible to accommodate your child’s individual needs. Our mature and nurturing counsellors will keep your child safe and happy. We aim to please!”
I met with Coach Carson, as he liked to be called, and his wife, Wendy, who were the owners and camp directors, for a job interview in their swanky office in downtown Toronto. “Are you ready for a fantastic summer?” Coach Carson asked me. He was a toned and tanned marathon-running man in his mid-fifties who spoke so animatedly, it was as if he were about to break into a camp cheer at any moment. “So far, we have a record-breaking eight hundred campers enrolled, which means we’re filled to capacity. We even have a wait list!”
Coach Carson explained that he’d worked in the corporate world for many years, but as a “people person” and a lifelong camper, it was as a camp director that he felt he’d finally found his true calling: the “business of fun.”
“Safe fun,” Wendy interjected.
My ears perked up at this.
“Camp is in my blood,” he said. “I’ll never grow up. Camp keeps me young.” He grinned and shrugged, raising his arms in a helpless what-can-you-do gesture.
My face was beginning to ache from excessive smiling in response, but then his tone dropped down to deep concern. “Kids these days are anxious and stressed.” He shook his head sadly. “More than ever, kids need camp to escape pressures at home and at school. Camp is no longer a luxury. It’s an absolute necessity.”
He invited me to a screening room to view a video he’d produced, “Welcome to Camp Carson – a Cutting Edge Camp.” While he was setting it up, I studied a map of the camp and surrounding area, displayed on the wall. On the map the camp was located on Stormy Lake, but in the brochure, it was called Lake Serenity.
“We changed the name,” he explained, “so as not to cause undue alarm. It’s a gorgeous property! Hollywood celebrities have built stunning cottages right across the lake from us. If you’re lucky you’ll catch a glimpse of one or two over the summer.”
A secretary placed a plate of Rivi’s Guilt Free Cookies along with bottles of mineral water on his desk. I sank into an overstuffed leather couch to watch the video. It opened with a friendly, rockin’ medley of popular tunes in a peppy soundtrack over a kaleidoscope filmstrip collage of happy children’s faces – flushed, glowing, covered in face paint or theatrical makeup, smudged with pottery clay, all with huge smiles grinning out at the camera. Everyone seemed to be having the time of their lives.
“Did that wow you? Are these great visuals or what?” he asked as a perfect sunset stretched across the sky and a silhouette of kids sitting around a campfire faded out in the final frame.
Next, I sat down with Wendy, who was the coordinator of the camp’s Medical Centre, or mc. She and Bruce met at Camp Carson many years ago, when it was run by Bruce’s father. Wendy was fit, blonde, and pretty, decked out in stretchy yoga wear with a pearl necklace. I couldn’t imagine her getting down and dirty at camp and she readily admitted she didn’t. “I’m mostly in the office, but all the kids know me. They call me the ‘The Tiger Lady,’” she said with a chuckle. “They say I’m tough, but they know I love ’em and the parents know their kids are safe with us.”
After a review of my qualifications, Wendy Carson laid down the law.
“Drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol are strictly prohibited. Any counsellor or staff member under the influence or found using any of these substances on campgrounds will be immediately dismissed.” She looked at me to check if I was okay with that, which I was. “As for sex …” She paused to let this new subject register. “Sex is forbidden.”
For a second, I paused, too. Did that apply to me? I guess it didn’t really matter since Ivan wasn’t planning any conjugal visits. He was looking forward to yet another carefree break from his wife and kids. I nodded my agreement.
“… as for PDA – that’s what the kids call it, Public Displays of Affection – we have the four-hand rule. They must keep their hands to themselves. For example, if you see them around the campfire and suspect they’re getting into mischief, tell them you have to see four hands at all times. Oh, you have to keep an eye on them. After one CIT canoe trip, we found two sleeping bags zipped together!”
Next, we turned to the medical files. “I’m a nurse, too,” Wendy said, “but now I head up the office administration, marketing, risk management and disaster planning.”
Such as, what, hostage-taking, bomb threats, biological warfare? Any searches for Weapons of Mass Destruction? These guys were certainly thorough!
“We have a doctor on staff and two nurses,” Wendy continued. “I don’t do any hands-on nursing any more but they all come to me for hugs.” She opened her arms wide to show just how welcoming those hugs were. “I know them all by name. I was the camp nurse when their parents were campers.”
As I scanned the camper medical files, Wendy explained their policies about medications. “First and foremost, all drugs will be kept locked up at all times, except at meals when you take what you need to the dining hall. Only asthma inhalers and EpiPens may be kept with the camper in a fanny pack.
“Another thing,” she continued, “we encourage parents to disclose everything about their children’s health on the forms, but occasionally you’ll find they leave out key information, perhaps out of fear their child will be rejected, which, by the way, would never happen. As you can appreciate, we like to know as much as possible ahead of time. Now, with your vast nursing experience, I’m quite certain none of their medications will faze you.”
Oh no, believe me, I was fazed, all right. Many children were on long lists of medications, as many meds as I’d seen on some of my very sick hospital patients. There were children on antidepressants, and anti-anxiety drugs, some that they took daily and others on an as-needed basis. There were kids on a variety of drugs for attention deficit disorder (add), hyperactivity, or “oppositional behaviour.” Some children who were on these drugs were also on nighttime sedation to counteract the stimulating effects of their daytime meds. (Technically, these drugs were stimulants, but for children with add they had a calming effect.) In addition, some of these children required liquid nutritional supplements because the add drugs decreased their appetite and they didn’t take in sufficient calories. Other children – and by no means only the youngest ones – had problems with bedwetting and they took a dose of a drug called desmopressin before bed. It was a synthetic version of a natural hormone and I was familiar with it from the ICU. There, I’d given it intravenously to brain-dead organ donors to curb their urine production prior to transplantation. I hadn’t known that as an antidiuretic it could also be used to treat bedwetting.
In addition to those meds, many children were on allergy pills and asthma puffers and inhalers. Parents also sent their kids with bottles of non-prescription drugs, over-the-counter pain killers and anti-inflammatories, along with vitamin and mineral supplements. Then there was a huge range of natural products I’d only heard of but had never administered, such as anti-oxidants, immune-system boosters, and products that contained St. John’s wort for “mood disturbances,” tryptophan and melatonin to “regulate the sleep cycle,” and ginseng and kava-kava for “energy boosts.” Given all the medications they were on, I wondered if the kids were sickly, but as I read through their health forms, I noted that they were all robustly healthy. Many were high achievers – athletes, musicians, child actors, and award-winning students.
“I’m not familiar with some of these medications,” I admitted, “but I’ll read up on them before camp.”
Then we went through the special diets, food restrictions, and dietary requests. Some children needed wheat-free, gluten-free, and/or dairy-free meals. Some were strictly or flexibly vegetarian, including one whose mother stated her child didn’t eat anything that “had parents;�
� some just didn’t eat red meat, and one camper stated she ate everything except mammals. Some requested kosher food, but others were okay with “kosher-style,” which meant no bacon or cheeseburgers. There were kids with life-threatening food allergies to peanuts or tree nuts. Others merely had nut sensitivities. There were allergies to fish or eggs or to common fruits, such as apples or pears, or to more exotic fruits such as kiwi and persimmon. Some children would eat no vegetables at all. Many parents mentioned their children’s food dislikes in lists that included beets, broccoli, and sardines – no surprises there – but one mother wrote a lengthy letter stating that her daughter was on a sugar-free diet, with no caffeine or carbonated drinks, and was “highly allergic to chocolate.” Her insistent tone made me wonder if she simply didn’t want her child to have those treats.
I asked how the kitchen staff coped with so many requests and Wendy explained.
“Trish is the Five-Star General and Johnny, her husband, is her Commander-in-Chief. Our kitchen is run like a military operation. Trish makes the place tick like clockwork. Each task is timed. Kitchen workers know they will be fired if they work too slowly or inefficiently. It has to be this way. Don’t forget, we are feeding three meals a day to 800 campers, plus 320 staff members. By the way, kitchen staff are strictly forbidden from socializing with the campers.”
That sounded like a strange rule but Wendy’s authoritative tone didn’t invite discussion.
Coach Carson and Wendy offered me the job on the spot. I figured if I was going to work so hard, I might as well do it in exchange for a camp that offered so many activities and such luxurious facilities. However, just before I signed the contract, Wendy asked me something that did give me pause.
“It’s important that our nurses get involved in the life of camp, such as the singsongs and campfires. Our nurses must be fun-loving. Would that describe you?”
“What a question!” I said and plastered a big smile on my face.
A fleet of air-conditioned coach buses was lined up in the parking lot of a shopping mall, ready to transport the campers on the three-hour drive to cottage country, the clean, green, Haliburton Highlands of Ontario with its abundance of beautiful lakes, forests, and rocks. The children’s duffel bags had been sent ahead earlier so that the counsellors could unpack their clothes and have their beds made up for them by the time they arrived. (I hoped they wouldn’t notice I hadn’t sent anywhere near the ten pairs of shorts and eight pairs of pants the clothing list dictated. My kids would have to use the camp laundry.)
I was stationed at the Medical Centre van, clipboard in hand, wearing the extra-large T-shirt Coach Carson issued me, with the Carson logo in blue, green, and gold. My job was to receive the campers’ meds and ensure they were properly labelled. Afterward, I would drive the van up to camp on my own. My kids were going with the other campers, because, as Coach Carson explained, “camp starts on the bus.” They went according to their groups: Max, age seven, was a Hawthorne in the Wildflower Unit, and Harry, at nine, was a Polaris in the Constellation Unit.
During the intake of camper meds, I collected a huge pile of epinephrine syringes – EpiPens for short – in a large plastic laundry bin. They were the emergency treatment for those children who had allergic reactions so strong that they could go into anaphylactic shock, a life-threatening situation. These campers had to bring along extra EpiPens because for every one of them two pens were kept in the Medical Centre, another in their cabin, and a few others in strategic positions all around camp; as well, each camper carried a pen at all times. I couldn’t help but reflect that in this plastic bin there was more standby epinephrine* than the total amount I’d given in treating all of my hospital patients during the hundreds of cardiac arrest cases I had participated in over the years. It was one of the first drugs we reached for when a patient’s heart rate dropped dangerously low and it was used in almost every cardiac arrest. Well, we’d certainly be prepared for any cases of anaphylactic shock that might arise, but I couldn’t help but wonder if a few of these EpiPens were sent “just to be on the safe side.” Peanut allergies were certainly on the rise, but were all of these truly lethal allergies? I had a feeling there was also a component of parental anxiety – completely understandable when the issue is a life-threatening condition.
Along with meds, I received other items from parents. One father handed me a heavy knapsack filled with textbooks. He’d requested that a counsellor tutor his twelve-year-old, “to give him a head start on next year’s material. I want him to have that edge.”
A mother gave me an insulated food jar containing a hard-boiled egg rolling around in it. “Please give this to Justin when he arrives at camp,” she said. “He needs protein after the long bus ride.”
While the campers and parents said their goodbyes, I stood browsing through a growing pile of letters addressed “Attention: Camp Nurse.”
Connor stutters and kids pick on him a lot. Has a hard time with letter-writing (no spell-check at camp!) so counsellors, please help. Also, very sensitive to many things, especially loud noise and flashing lights. Please, no strobe lights!
Shawna is afraid of snakes. Please ensure that she has no contact with snakes. NO SNAKES.
Wayne doesn’t like to be touched. Please give him a warning if you want to hug him or pat him on the back. Must carry bug spray with him at all times. He worries about West Nile Virus. He tends to be quiet, prefers to sleep in his clothes and will not change them unless forced to by counsellors. Gets a rash if he sits around in wet bathing suit for too long. Can’t handle lack of privacy. Does not respond to a sarcastic tone. He doesn’t like to swim in cold water (takes a long time to get in), but drinks only cold water.
Melanie is a gifted singer. Please tell the musical director she must have a decent part in the camp play. She was overlooked last year. A HUGE mistake. It’s been bad for her self-esteem!
Josh can play soccer, but not as goalie. [Was that offered as a health advisory or a game strategy?]
Shane is not officially gifted but tested VERY close.
If Brian can’t sleep, give him two Tylenols to settle him down. Has some anger issues. Is working on controlling his temper.
Mandy has a wheat and dairy intolerance and is allergic to peas, tree nuts, and all legumes. May also be allergic to poopy [sic] seeds? Has never had a reaction but must carry EpiPen with her at all times.
Some notes were alarming, all the more so because of their cryptic matter-of-factness.
Darren had an isolated episode of hysterical blindness but has experienced a complete cure. Stress-related.
Michael and Jenna’s father died a few months ago (suicide) and I’m hoping camp will help them take their mind off of things.
Deanna’s father and I have divorced recently. She needs to be with other children of divorced parents to talk things over. Has hay fever and is in a complicated love triangle with her parents. Vomits easily and likes things organized. High anxiety if there is disorder.
Please keep an eye on Samantha. She was recently hospitalized due to weight loss. She’s fine now, but FYI.
Megan recently gained fifteen pounds and needs to lose it! We’re praying she’ll lose weight at camp. Please make sure she doesn’t lie on her bed reading all summer and weigh her once a week.
I need to be informed of everything. Notify me if you intend on giving Chad anything, even a Tylenol.
Reading these notes and seeing the parents say their goodbyes made me realize how hard it must be for parents to give up control and entrust their children to the care of strangers. It brought home how huge my responsibilities would be with the children in the weeks to come and how important it would be for me to be that reassuring voice on the phone to their parents.
Most kids were handling the goodbyes fairly well, even the boy who was jumping up and down just before getting on the bus. He explained, “I’m trying to get rid of everything I learned at school.” He pulled at his scalp in an attempt to expel the offending materi
al. The kids were coping, but the parents, not so well. I was just about to pack up my car when a mother in tears ran over and threw herself on me. “Please look after my darling babies!” She grasped my shoulders and pulled me close.
“What are your children’s names?” So I’ll know which ones to avoid.
“My daughter is Alexa Rose and she happens to be the prettiest girl at camp! She’s a Scorpio and her brother, Thomas Carl, is an Aries.” She handed me a bottle of pills called Ativan, a sedative. “Give Alexa Rose one at night for separation anxiety and T.C. can have one too. Oh, and give them a few drops of Rescue Remedy.” She handed me a small brown glass bottle containing a clear liquid. It was a tincture of distilled flowers that contained a touch of grape alcohol. She clutched her children before tearing herself away.
Just before the campers boarded the buses, they all reluctantly handed over their electronic games, cellphones, and portable computers. Turning in their hardware was the signal to say goodbye. Now, all each of them carried was a hefty tool chest (like the one Anderson had toted around at Camp Na-Gee-La but rarely used), as if they were carpenters, going off to a job site. These tool boxes were filled not with nails and screwdrivers but with bulk candy: bags of Nerds, jawbreakers, Sour Warheads, Cherry Blasters, Fuzzy Peaches, SweetTarts, and Skittles. The junk food policy at Camp Carson seemed to be to bring as much as you could possibly cram into the most gargantuan tool box you could find.
Alexa Rose’s mother came back to me. “I feel like I’m abandoning them,” she said as she dabbed at her tears. “This is so hard on me. I wish I was going, too.” She wrung her hands as she gazed at the departing buses. She gave herself a few drops of Rescue Remedy from her own bottle. “It’s hard to believe they can survive in that wilderness without me there to protect them.” As the buses began to pull out of the parking lot, she ran alongside, waving at her children, now beyond her reach.