Inept School Nurses: The Impetigo Incident

For my entire elementary school career, I didn't see the school nurse as a healer or care-taker (entrusted with our physical health), but as a gate-keeper. Her office and a sufficient temperature were enough to grant me a one-way ticket to an afternoon of cartoons and mommying. But by high school the nurses knew better. They pretty much never sent anyone home. Unless you had some exotic disease. And even if you did, they might not recognize it...

I used to wrestle in high school. One of the things that came of that is that I've had all manner of exotic sounding skin diseases, but impetigo, a bacteria-induced rash, was what my coach considered the plague. If anything that might be a rash appeared on any of us, it was usually identified as ringworm (not so bad but much more common), and we got a lecture of the dangers of impetigo and bodily hygiene; the poor soul with the actual rash was shunned like a leper.

One day of sophomore year season my regular sparring partner Andrew came to me with a taped-up knee, telling me he'd be sitting out of practice for a while: "Hey T.J., the doctor told me I have impetigo. I think I got it from the wrestling tournament we went to. Because we've been practicing together so much, you're probably going to get it."

Oh please. With a fifteen year-old's self-assured invincibility, I was utterly confidence in the strength of my immune system. But the next night, while on the telephone with a friend, I realized I was unconsciously scratching my neck...

Impetigo looks worse than it actually is. It itches and all that, but actually looks like scabbed-over mosquito bites. The rash was running all down the right side of my neck. Did Andrew knee me in the artery?

Andrew sat to my right in geometry class. My rash was impossible to hide. He teased me and told me to go to the nurse, which I did. My rash matched his. Without a doubt, I had impetigo.

The nurse took a look at my rash with raised eyebrows and a lowered forehead. "These look like flea bites to me!" No no no!!!! I thought! Logically, I knew it was impetigo, but already a high-schooler's vanity and low self-confidence were taking over my brain. Yes, I did have a cat, maybe it was fleas! I felt so dirty. By that time the first nurse had already called the second nurse over to confirm that, indeed, I was flea-infested. I walked out of the nurse's office in shock...and out of a school of 1,700, Andrew was randomly walking by at that moment. "Hey, what did she say?!", he asked. "Uh, nothing..." I said and walked quickly past him...having impetigo was a battle scar, having fleas placed you in the company of street derelicts.

"Screw that!" I though, "Mom, you have to take me to the doctor!". My doctor walks in the examination room, took one look at me:
"What do you think you have?", asking me to verify my knowledge of medicine, as if I was in residency under him.
"Impetigo?" I answer...
"Yup" was all he said, bored. I was just glad I didn't have fleas.


Epilogue: So, I got some cream and the rash went away in a few days. Andrew had said the school nurse was equally unsure, joking that she likened one patch to poison ivy, one patch to spider bites...by next year I'd graduate beyond the skin diseases, popping my ankle one January evening in an attempted throw (it was a "Hail Mary play" to break a tie I was in...big mistake) which landed me in crutches for a week, a hard ankle brace until March, and a soft one for two years after, any time it rained.