They say “doctors diagnose, but nurses save lives.” That statement couldn’t be more true for a school nurse in New Jersey, who took one look at a kindergartener’s skin and knew that something was wrong.
Nathan Campbell had just kicked off the school year when his teacher, Kathy Keller, noticed that the 6-year-old wasn’t acting like his usual self. He was extremely tired, and complained about his legs hurting. When she noticed how pale his skin was, the kindergarten teacher sent Nathan to the nurse’s office. She says she just had a gut feeling that he needed help:
“It was just something different about him. And I had worked with his sister. I had known his brother. Something was off.”
The school nurse at Zane North Elementary is Patti Butler. “Nurse Patti” examined Nathan and was shocked by what she discovered. “Pale,” was an understatement for what she saw in his skin:
“I went behind him so the light was coming through and his skin was translucent.”
Patti says she’s only seen someone with skin similar to Nathan’s once in her whole 25 years of being a nurse, and it had her panicked. She called Nathan’s mother Nicole and relayed her concerns, begging the mother to get her son checked out.
Nicole admittedly thought Patti was overreacting, and brushed off Nathan’s pale skin as a symptom of the common cold.
Patti, who also works in the neonatal ICU at a local New Jersey hospital, knew she couldn’t give up. She continued to press Nicole, pleading with her to have Nathan’s blood tested.