This cache is a medium-sized lock-n-lock cache container with logbook, pencil, and appropriate swag (SEASONAL CHANGE TO VERY SMALL CONTAINER WITH ONLY A LOG SHEET UNTIL LEAVES APPEAR AGAIN FOR CACHE COVER). The cache is hidden near a campus site that is related to professionals who most often provide the hands-on, day-to-day care for those with health challenges. The area could be full of muggles at certain times, especially during the school year, so please use stealth. There is metered parking nearby. Please make sure the cache is carefully secure when you return it to its hiding place.
My mom is retired, but during her 35-year career, she worked long and hard as a public health nurse. She excelled in every kind of public health nursing – she visited people in their homes so they could heal at home instead of in an institutional setting; she worked at public clinics to immunize children and check their hearing and sight and to care for young, low-income pregnant women and their babies. She worked in hospices to provide terminal patients the opportunity to die in dignity and comfort. She staffed workshops on how to prevent communicable disease, from something as simple as the common cold to something as serious as the HIV virus. She served as the founder of a visiting nurse unit for a hospital, when visiting nurse staffs first became important to hospitals as “follow-up” caregivers. She even taught public health nursing at the college-level after she obtained her MSN and pursued PhD studies. Her constant effort was to protect the public health and to help heal people (or help them die, when dying was inevitable) in the place they were most comfortable – at home. My mom had a very noble career, and she was a hero to many people, including me.
Despite being retired now, Mom keeps her nursing license current, she is a hospice volunteer, and she is still very concerned about public health. She has several maxims about maintaining overall good health (which I sometimes call “preachings” - she means well), but there is one rule that stands out in my mind as an oft-repeated nurse (and Mom) instruction: WASH YOUR HANDS! WASH YOUR HANDS! WASH YOUR HANDS! The best way for the public to protect itself from many, many communicable diseases is for EVERYONE TO WASH THEIR HANDS A LOT! We have heard this from everyone from our moms to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), and it’s TRUE!
So, in honor of my mom, her birthday, and her lifelong commitment to public health, I have hidden a cache with unusual swag: containers of antibacterial sanitizer (eg: Purell), which is used today to “wash hands” if soap and warm water are not available. After you open the cache, sign the log, and examine and/or trade swag, for heaven’s sake, take a bottle of the anti-bacterial sanitizer and clean your hands! Do you have any idea how many people have touched that cache with who knows what on their hands?! (I sound like a mom – hee hee hee). Take the bottle with you and tuck it away in the car or your backpack or purse and make good use of it. Keep those hands clean! Sláinte!
Congratulations, djrobb, on FTF!
(Let me know when the cache runs short of the bottles, I will try to re-stock as needed. Winter months will require container and swag seasonal adjustments.)