Blog Post 3 (When I Was the High School HO, Shay and Jed, Tattooed at 56)

When I Was The High School HO

I was the school nurse, the only school nurse, in a high school with a high poverty and crime rate in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The school was in session year round with a rotation of students 12 months a year and a total enrollment of 7000 (3500 on campus at a time). There was no time for anything except taking care of emergencies, every day, all day. Gang issues abounded and with them all of the problems that come with gangs…fights, lockdowns, violence, drugs, social problems, etc… My health office wasn’t too far from the main entrance. Although we had security in the form of security guards and metal detectors, it was not always reliable. Weapons sometimes made it through and the fence around campus, although 6 feet tall, was pretty easy to scale. To make matters worse, my intercom system didn’t work. Several times the school would go into lockdown and no one ever thought to let me know! I had two forms of communication with the outside world and the rest of campus. These were the desk phone and a Walkie Talkie/Radio. Any time there was an emergency on campus, I would take off with my bag and my radio, never really knowing what situation would greet me when I arrived. I had a bad habit of setting down my radio and leaving it behind when I was out on campus. On one particular day, I was summoned to a chain link fence out near the back perimeter of campus during lunch break to check a student with a head injury. As I approached the bench where he was sitting, I put my bag and  radio down on the cement and began to assess him. He had a big bump and laceration to his head and a few abrasions to the rest of his body. He was alert and oriented and was laughing and joking with a large group of female admirers surrounding him, oohing and aahing with concern. When I questioned him about what had happened, he shared with me in a heavy Spanish accent that his “boot came loose from the fence”. I looked down at his feet, seeing he was wearing only one black cowboy boot, while the other boot was laying over by the chain link fence. He had a large black cowboy hat in his hand that was apparently part of his daily apparel. 

The ladies were swooning and fussing over him and he was loving it. Once I determined this was not a 911 situation, I questioned him further about what had happened. Nurse, he said, I can run up that fence, hook the heels of my boots into it and hang upside down by my boots! I looked at him with shocked disbelief! THe girls surrounding him verified that he could indeed do this and they had seen it many times! Apparently he would take off at a run to the fence, which was old and leaned a bit and run up it then somehow hook his heels in and hang there upside down. He assured me he had done this successfully many times, but this one time one of his boots slid off and he fell on his head. When I asked him why on earth he did this he smiled and nodded at me knowingly and stated in a heavy Spanish accent, “The senoritas of course! They like it!!” I laughed. Teenagers and their antics!

As I finished bandaging him and had an admin call the parent, I was summoned back to my office for a diabetic emergency. I gathered the student and my nursing bag followed by his bevy of admirers  and rushed back to my office. Once things settled out, a group of students came in laughing uncontrollably. They had found my radio where I left it out by the fence. Having first gone to the office to turn it in, they were told it was the Nurse’s radio and to bring it to me. What they found so hysterically funny is that, instead of labeling it NURSE so that it would always find it’s way back to me, Security had labeled it “HO” in large white letters. The HO actually stood for Health Office, but that is not how a teenager’s mind works! Word of this got around quickly and it became the subject of some good natured teasing. Thereafter, as I rushed around campus responding to calls for medical assessment or care, I would often hear, “Uh, oh. Here comes the HO. Someone must have gotten hurt!" If I left behind my radio, the students would say, “Oh, that belongs to the HO. I’ll take it to her”…and that is how I became known as the high school HO! 

“Shay & Jed”

I got a call one Friday morning from a teacher that a student was sitting in the back of the class crying silently and would not tell the teacher what was wrong. She asked if I could talk to the student. “Shay”, barely 15 years old, entered my office with a look that told me she had the weight of the world on her young shoulders. It took some prodding to get it out of her. She was pregnant. She and the 16 year old father, “Jed”, were terrified to tell their parents. I have worked with hundreds, actually thousands of teens who either were pregnant or afraid they might be through the years. What made this case one of the most memorable was the lengths Shay and Jed went through, with limited resources, to prepare for their baby. Like many teens, the fear of their parents finding out they were having sex overrode the fear of seeking contraception and the fear of getting pregnant. Like the mindset of most other teens, pregnancy just couldn’t and wouldn’t happen to them, but it did. They had not used protection for fear that if they went to a local clinic to ask for some, someone would recognize them and tell their parents. Besides, they had no way to get to the clinic. It was all the way across town. They also were afraid to go into the two stores within walking distance from home to buy condoms, again fearing they might be recognized. I had worked in districts where I was allowed to keep condoms and give them out with instructions and counseling when students asked, but in this district, the school board wasn’t having it. Members of this school board actually protested state laws about reproductive health education in our district. It made no difference that at that time, our county had one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the state and had been awarded a grant to combat this problem.  That “battle” is a story for another day. 

Shay wasn’t old enough to get a job, but her boyfriend found a job bussing tables in a local pizza place. On Saturdays, they would take his meager earnings and walk to local yard sales in the community and buy baby items, hiding them in the back of their closets so their parents wouldn’t find them. Shay knew that eating right was important to having a healthy baby and had done some research on which foods were good for development. I was also astounded to find out that she had managed to get some old leftover prenatal vitamins from a friend who’s sister had a baby a couple of years earlier, and took them daily.  Although not the ideal prenatal situation, it was much better than many I had seen. They were really trying and this young father had not left her to deal with this on her own.

State laws regarding parental notification of teen pregnancy are confusing and can seem contradictory. (Laws vary from state to state.) Disclosure to the parent is a slippery slope. Every situation is different. They do not all fit neatly into a little black and white box. Before judging, consider the following:

Teens, more often than not, will not disclose they are pregnant, or sexually active to their parents. This results in a lack of protection against not only pregnancy but sexually transmitted diseases as well. A lack of care for STDs and of prenatal care puts the teen’s health and their unborn child’s health at risk. It is not uncommon for pregnant teens to tell no one about a pregnancy, then give birth alone and abandon the baby. This is not just a problem for the poor and indigent population. I have seen this happen at all income and education  levels and in homes where both parents are loving and involved and feel they have a good handle on the details of their teen’s life. TEEN MINDS JUST DO NOT GET THE BIG PICTURE. It is a given that teens MUST have someone they can go to that they trust to ask questions and get assistance with reproductive health if needed. The high school nurse is THAT person and she must always maintain a level of trust with the student population so that students feel there is someone they can go to. Do we want the student to go to the parent with these issues instead of us? Absolutely! Here is how a typical conversation goes in my office…

“Do your parents know? Would you feel comfortable telling them? What if we told them together? No? Okay, I can keep your secret unless or until something happens that could jeopardize your health. At that point, legally I would have to call your parent. In the meantime, I want you to think about when/how you will tell them. You can do it alone or we can do it together, but we have to get you in for care (prenatal or birth control). You will never, ever tell your parent? Why? How do you think she/he will react? Yell and scream at you? You know, any time a parent finds out their teen is sexually active or pregnant, they are going to be upset. They actually have a right to be. They will be hurt, disappointed, scared and angry. At the end of the day though, isn’t this the person who has always been there for you and has always had your back? Once the shock has worn off, they will help you figure out what to do. You are still not going to tell them? Do you have an aunt or an adult family member you can confide in? “ This goes on and on with frequent visits to the nurse’s office for updates and counseling until something gives.

OR the conversation sometimes goes like this…

“You can’t tell because your Dad will be beat you? or  You can’t tell because your parents will kick you out of the house like they did your sister and you have no where else to go?” These are difficult situations and reality for many teens. More than once, I have had a resource officer standby outside my door as we were in a situation where the parents HAD to be told and we did not know if the reaction would be a violent one. I usually had these meetings earlier in the day in case we needed to make a report to Child Protective Services who would need time to find a place for the student to go that night if the parent refused to let them come home, threatened violence or dumped their belongings outside the home and locked them out.

Finally, there is one more piece of information to be considered when wading through all of this muck. There are laws protecting the teen’s right to privacy and there is some liability for a nurse, social worker, counselor, etc… who discloses this information to the parent against the student’s wishes. Depending upon state laws, students can come back and sue the school nurse, principal, counselor, etc…for disclosing this type of information to the parent without the student’s consent. These laws remain in effect for as long as 10 years after graduation..

Back to Shay and Jed. She had not had a period in 5-6 months, so was almost through her second trimester. She promised to tell her Mom that night. The next morning she came by to tell me that she had told her Mom, and that her Mom was very upset and cried and yelled, but in the end, her Mom hugged her and told her they would get through it together. I would like to say that this was the end of Shay and Jed’s story, but it was not. A couple of days later, Shay came into my office, again crying. She had not felt her baby move all day and was scared. I called her mother who came right away and took her to the hospital. No heartbeat could be found. Shay had lost her baby. After a grueling 48 hour long labor, 15 year old gave birth to a stillborn little boy.

Tattoo at 56

My husband, retired from the Navy, has tattoos. He had one when I met him 38 years ago and has gradually added to his collection through the years. I must say they are all pieces of art, pre-planned and meticulously and tastefully done.. a peacock, a tiger, a wolf, a Notre Dame logo and most recently a family crest tattoo that he designed himself. People have asked me over the years if I was ever going to get one. My answer was always a resounding “NO!’  I have always known that I never wanted anything permanent on my body. I knew that just as my taste in fashion, hair, makeup, etc…over the years had changed, my taste in body art would too and I would probably regret it. I had only been inside a tattoo parlor once when I accompanied a friend to have a tattoo of her ex-husband’s name removed from her breast. I stood there beside the chair like an elderly church lady in my bermuda shorts with my purse on my arm, looking, I am sure, as awkward as I felt.

As our children got older, they began to talk about getting tattoos. It was the thing to do over the last decade or so and it is hard to find a person college aged or in their 20s who doesn’t have multiple tattoos. Our son Zack came home after joining the Navy with a tattoo of a ship. I wasn’t crazy about the idea but he was an adult and at least it wasn’t something distasteful. As a sophomore in college, our daughter Alyssa began talking about getting one. Her Dad tried very hard to get her to wait until the age of 25, telling her that what appeals to a person in their teens or early 20s may not be appealing later in life. She was a poor college student and didn’t have much money. When she showed me her ankle “tattoo”, all I saw was a squiggly line that looked just like a sperm to me and I said as much! “You got a SPERM tattooed on your ankle?!!!” We were in a coffee shop and it just popped out of my mouth before I could stop it. She was furious! “It is a WAVE and signifies my love of the ocean!” she snapped. She eventually added to that wave and I am happy to report it no longer looks like a sperm.

A few years ago, Alyssa had seen these little tiny heart tattoos; each half made from the thumb prints of two people. When she suggested we get matching ones as mother and daughter, I gave it some thought and finally agreed. After all, it would be a tiny little heart on my chest and hidden from view by a bra or swimsuit. It would be personal and private, the size of two little thumbprints, one hers and one mine. 

Upon arrival, the tattoo artist informed me that in order to see the thumbprint lines, he would need to make it a ‘little bigger’ than the actual thumbprint heart. I agreed without asking HOW much bigger. As he started the process, I realized it was going to hurt a lot more than I thought it would. I tensed and twitched, sighed and whistled. The tattoo artist had to tell me to be still multiple times. I think he was more than a little exasperated with what a big baby I turned out to be. I was so glad when he was done, I wanted to leap off the table and run out of there.

 A “little bigger” ended up being 2 ½ times the size of our combined thumbprints!  To top that off, weight gain and well, uhm…gravity have resulted in it growing even more and sinking lower every year!. It’s now about 3” and there is no hiding it,

So that is how I came to get my first, and LAST tattoo.

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