<p>When I was a college freshman, the older and wiser (or so I assumed) students warned me that the campus doctors were sure to diagnose mono or pregnancy, regardless of my symptoms. So I assiduously avoided the infirmary, no matter how fluish I felt. Hopefully, students today are more pro-active than I was when it comes to their health, but parents should check out this news story for some helpful ideas about what to think and talk about as kids head off to school:</p>
<p>Yup. Get them the meningitis vaccine, load them up with Airborne, deliver the standard lecture about washing hands, getting enough sleep, not drinking from red cups and you are good to go.</p>
<p>I’ll add three things to the advice in the article. 1) If in doubt, call home. Your kid hopefully already feels comfortable calling home if he’s very sick in the middle of the night, but if he tends to be a tough guy, it’s good to remind him. Even over the phone parents can be better at determining how serious illness is than a tired, new doctor in a health center. The ER should always be an option if it’s nighttime, a weekend, or the student seems extremely ill. 2) Students who have suffer from chronic illness should form a relationship with a good, local doctor. 3) Learn how to take care of friends who are very drunk, and learn when to call for help.</p>
<p>Yes, college students need to know when to call for help and they must also be HONEST with medical personnel. Don’t lie about what drugs or alcohol a friend has ingested. This is no time to protect your pal’s reputation or to worry about punishments. The wrong information can cost this friend his or her life.</p>
<p>One of the great things about my college is that the dorms are split into houses, which each have senior graduate students, called Resident Heads, overseeing the house. Students always got their RHs when a situation was over their heads. RHs aren’t there to punish, so students were never nervous about approaching them if a friend was very sick from drinking. The trained RHs would be able to best assess the situation and decide on a course of action. I can think of a few cases (just in my direct knowledge–and this isn’t something students talk about very much) where the RHs stayed with a student most of the night if friends or roommates felt scared or overwhelmed but the sick student didn’t need to go to the ER and/or get his/her stomach pumped. At many schools students are forced between choosing to let nature take its course and hope for the best and calling 911, even though the student will probably be fine without visiting the hospital (and will not be happy to wake up in the hospital, which is costly and requires the student to tell his/her parents). It’s not a very good choice. It’s especially not a good choice for drunk college students to have to make. Anyway, I’m a bit off topic, but I think it’s crucial that students learn what to do in different situations and which warning signs warrant an ER trip.</p>
<p>This brings up memories. 20 years ago the ER (at school) diagnosed pregnancy (without a test mind you) and refused to treat me when I had food poisoning. They changed their mind when I went into shock. It’s amazing how good an ER can get when your blood pressure falls to 50/35.</p>
<p>Haha, a few years back my girlfriend had mono and it was misdiagnosed by the nurse as her being pregnant. The nurse didn’t quite get it when my girlfriend was trying to tactfully explain to her how it would be impossible for her to be pregnant!</p>
<p>Where I was the “dorm doc”, my most frequent things were “PID” (Pelvic Inflammatory disease of the gonnorhea persuasion; this was just before “HIV” came to our attention), and " hyperventilation"</p>
<p>Plastic red cups (<a href=“http://www.catherine-ann.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/redcups.jpg[/url]”>http://www.catherine-ann.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/redcups.jpg</a>) are generally how alcohol is served at most parties, so the general rule I know of is if you set your cup down or let it out of your sight, don’t pick it back up. This comes both from date rape drug concerns as well as sharing drinks with friends, which is a fantastic way to spread sickness. I know one of my friends’ roommates accidentally picked up his girlfriend’s drink and wound up getting drugged, which was a bit unnerving for him (and her).</p>
<p>The OTHER reason not to drink from red cups is because you don’t know what was in there to begin with. If you drink a beer you know you opened the can or bottle and it is a Corona or Budweiser or whatever.
The red cup drink is whatever someone put in the punch. Then you set it down and a whole nother spectrum of scariness comes into it.
Forget the don’t set it down or let it out of your site thing, just don’t drink from them period is my general take on it.</p>
<p>I’ve got a first aid kit that I carried around back and forth from college and internships as well as here at grad school. I’ve got ace bandages, band-aids, advil, tylenol, cortisone cream, neosporin, and a few other random medicines that have come in handy along the way. It’s a great way to make new friends. I know freshman year I was the hero since I had some tylenol after everyone else on the floor had gone out drinking and wound up with massive hangovers the next morning.</p>
<p>ebeeeee, I’ve never really seen open vats of alcohol. I’ve usually seen the red cups along with kegs or when people were in situations where they couldn’t really be seen holding a can/bottle of beer (on campus, generally). Heck, even at the grad student parties run by the school here they use red cups for all of their mixed drinks and beers.</p>
<p>I think it’s also a good idea to get CPR certified before you move into a dorm. I personally had to do it when I was working with young kids, but now that I know it I want to know it for the rest of my life. I do hope I’ll never have to use it, but you never know…especially living in a dorm where kids aren’t always making the smartest choices. Administering CPR until the paramedics get there can often be life-saving…or even if it doesn’t come to that, knowing enough not to lie a vomiting person on their back, but on their side so they don’t choke on their own vomit is always good.</p>
<ol>
<li>Send a first aid kid. Things to include:
-band-aids (consider buying just a big pack at costco or something, they come in handy and never expire)
-hydrocortizone cream (I got bit by a spider late one night and couldn’t drive anywhere to get some and it was terrible…I ended up smashing a benedryl pill and spreading it)
-advil, tylenol, motrin, and any other OTC meds used
-medical tape and guaze (just a little is all you need to get you by)
-epipen (if you need one for anything)
-cold pack</li>
</ol>
<p>I’m sure all you mothers out there know some other crucial things, but that’s everything I used for this year. A friend got Shingles (yes, shingles, at age 20…brought on by stress/no sleep) which is where the gauze came in handy. Broken fingers used the tape.<br>
Words of more wisdom: make sure we have our insurance cards prior to leaving. As in, ASK TO SEE THEM! Make sure they’re update and usable, as I got down to school with expired ones and it was a pain to deal with when I broke a foot. Terrible.</p>
<p>Usually people pour hard alcohol (e.g. vodka) or beer into red cups straight from the bottles/cans and just drink from there. It’s different than using a punch bowl. Obviously, the handle/fifth could have been drugged, but the chances of that are much less likely than of an individual, unattended red cup or punch bowl being drugged.</p>
![http://www.catherine-ann.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/redcups.jpg[/url]](http://www.catherine-ann.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/redcups.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
