I get bullied by the school nurse

I am finding it much more interesting to follow other people's blogs at the moment. Their lives, while I'm sure stressful, seems much more blog-worthy as they spend weeks at the hospital, buy houses, bring home babies. I always struggle in February--especially in these cold climates. So much of my life seems tied to the weather. My blogs would probably detail the weather--snowy again--raining today-- still cold and damp. I set my thermostat the highest I can finacially and environmentally handle, although I've been known to bump it up when I just can't stand to be cold any longer. (And lest any of you think I am a martyr--it is normally set at 69* and I've been known to slide it up to 74*).
The longer the winter drags on, the more tired I get--hibernation sounds pretty good. My clothes don't match, but I don't care as long as they're warm--my coat covers up my top half anyway. About the only things I'm still passionate about is food--everything tastes freaking fantastic. No matter how resolutely I start out the day to eat sensibly, heathfully--by lunch time, that split pea soup with fried salt pork and creme fraiche is calling my name.
Thank goodness for rituals. As I sleepwalk across the squares of the calendar---(slowly, oh, too slowly, will it ever be March?) at least I have the alarm to wake me up, my morning ritual of wake-Trita-up-make-his-lunch-check-the-weather-get-him-off-to-school-eat-breakfast-while-watching-the-news-read-scriptures-do-yoga-lay-back-in-bed-for-10-min.-get-the-rest-of-the-kids-up....you get the idea. Over the years, I've developed a ritual for just about everything, which I've always kind of thought of as wierd, but now it gets me through my days in a somewhat productive manner. I just need to incorporate blog-writing in these rituals so it will actually get done.
And although we've had basketball games, pinewood derbys, and fabulous recipes to relate, I'll get to those later and tell about how I once again let someone make me question my parenting skills.
This happens to me all the time, and each time it happens, I swear I'm going to stick to my guns and do what I feel is right, but it's so hard to do, especially when the person you're confronting is a professional. It doesn't help that most of the time I'm fighting for doing less for my children than the professional is proposing--(me: "Shouldn't the kids have more recess? What about nap time, shouldn't all day kindergarteners have a nap?" "I really don't think he needs pull-out classes." "I don't think he needs any more surgeries."). This one was just stupid though.
Tritan pointed out his finger just before he left for the bus-stop. It was puffy and looked like he had a blister on the side of his finger. Once I looked at it, I realized it was an infected hang-nail, put a band-aid on it, and told him we would soak it in Epsom salt when he got home. But at school, a teacher asked him why he had a band-aid, and when Tritan explained about his finger the teacher sent him to the nurse. The nurse had him soak his finger and then called me to tell me that he needed an appointment THAT day to see a dr. asap. "Well, we were going to soak it in--" I was going to say Epsom salt but I was cut off and told he needed an appointment TODAY.
So of course I made an appointment even though there were 100 other things going on. Maybe I didn't know anything after all, maybe he would get MERSA, maybe he already had blood poisoning. Surely, a nurse knows more than I do.
It took us an hour in total (and $85 on our high-deductible plan) to see the dr. so he could tell us to go home and SOAK IT IN EPSOM SALT.