The nurse’s office at Enchanted Hills Elementary doesn’t have a waiting room, but it sure could use one.

On Thursday morning, student after student came into the office to see long-time nurse Patty Carroll, who’s on the verge of retirement.

Barely old enough to join AARP, the Arizona native has plenty of things to do when she leaves her home away from home. But first, students need to be treated.

One student is seemingly napping under a blanket, while Carroll queries a third-grade boy about his symptoms.

“Try taking a little nap,” she advises him. “You’re just having trouble getting back on the horse.”

It’s an appropriate phrase for Carroll, who owns three horses and lives a short drive away from the school in Corrales.

Then the girl under the blanket says she feels nauseous. Carroll grabs a wastebasket and escorts her, ’basket under her chin, to the restroom.

Yep, another day in paradise for Carroll, who’s been a school nurse since 1987.

Patients and patience: “I have a little of both,” says Carroll, who was guided at an early age to pursue a career as a secretary, teacher or nurse.

A 1977 graduate of the University of Arizona, Carroll and her husband Larry, got married and moved to Albuquerque in 1978.

After several jobs in the nursing field, she got a job as school nurse at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary, then a part of Albuquerque Public Schools, in 1987. Since then, she has also been the school burse at Mountain View Middle School and Enchanted Hills Elementary, which she helped open in 1990.

Carroll thinks kids aren’t as healthy as they used to be and are more prone to miss something because of a very minor illness.

She said she’ll ask students if they would leave a birthday party if they felt the same way.

The most-common com-plaints, she said, unable to estimate how many Band-Aids she’s stuck on knees and elbows, are headaches and stomachaches.

Often, she said, such ailments are caused by stress, either in the classroom or at home. Her role is to get the students back to class. ”Healthy children learn better” is her mantra.

Although it may sound strange, in light of No Child Left Behind, school nurses are not funded by the state.

“We have to justify our position by being able to say we keep kids in school,” Carroll said. “School nursing’s not just Band-Aids anymore.”

The biggest change in her 21 years, says Carroll, is “we’re seeing more and more chronic illnesses, in general: asthma and diabetes are the most common.”

Whoever heard a decade or two ago about cottonwood, egg, peanut and even latex allergies? Such allergies are nothing to laugh at and anaphylactic shock can be fatal if the child is not administered the antidote.

It’s been a good career and even though she’s not immediately ready to pursue another job, she knows the nursing field always has openings.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do yet,” she said, in one breath, then talking about how excited she is to be taking piano lessons, getting back into showing horses, and taking a vacation to Ireland with her husband.

“I’m grateful, working for Rio Rancho Public Schools, (because) I have had good support from the district. School nurses are valued and we think that’s an important thing,” she said. “That’s made it even better to work here.

“She is the most pleasant, most efficient person I have ever worked with,” says Becky Stevenson, the school’s secretary and bookkeeper. “She is so good with the kids. She has a terrific bedside manner.”