My son suffers from chronic, debilitating migraines. He will experience a period with one or two a week, and then have a string of them for weeks. This has been going on for 5 years. We have good medical care and advice and have things left to try to minimize the headaches and help him cope. My question is what is the best way for him to handle as a freshman? Should he try to establish the headaches as a disability (which he will not want to do) or try to work with individual professors? The types of accommodations he needs are a single room, air conditioning, and permission to make up exams/ projects if he misses them.
Register it with the university disability office. If you have clear medical documentation going back years, make sure you have a letter from the doctor.
Do not rely upon professors to “work with” your student. That’s just asking for conflict, as a professor will reasonably ask why your son hasn’t registered with the disability office, if the migraines are debilitating.
Migraines are very common.
Agree with Periwiinkle. Register with the disability office. That is the standard path by which to “work” with any professor. My DS has a chronic medical condition, registered with the disability office upon arrival on campus and has never had a problem getting accommodations. Once the disability office is involved, everyone else on campus knows what they need to do and they do it.
My daughter filed with the disabilities office due to her asthma and migraines. It got her dibs on a single room after a disastrous freshman year with a roommate. She had one life threatening asthma attack while in class, and her professor sent someone off to her dorm room to fetch her nebulizer after her emergency inhaler did not help her, then summoned an ambulance.
Good advice here. Also, if there are treatments left to try, I would be supporting my son in continuing to systematically use the time between now and college to determine if there is any prophylactic medication that could help reduce the intensity, duration, and frequency of the migraines.
Since regular meals, sleep, hydration and exercise make a difference to many with migraines, and being in a healthy routine can be a challenge to some new college students, reinforcing this before he leaves might help him manage his lifestyle to optimize results.
If he has prolonged periods of being unable to attend classes and there is a chance of missing a week of finals or mid-terms, it could be worthwhile to look into tuition insurance programs. Don’t know if they would make sense or exactly how coverage works, but if they offered relevant protection, it would be good to know.
All the best with this.
As a college instructor, let me reiterate what everyone has said. We normally don’t make decisions about student health issues without documentation. It really won’t fly for him to tell a prof he didn’t do X because he had a migraine. He needs to document it with the disabilities office.
Believe me, as a migraine sufferer and the mother of one, I sympathize. but if medical problems impair a student of mine’s ability to do the classwork, I can’t make the call myself. He really needs to have documentation on file ahead of time.
Thank you all for the advice; it’s just what I needed to know! I will start the process. (I know my son needs to do it, ut I will collect the information for him since he’s having a long string of headaches right now.) I know my son will be mortified asking for help, but it’s necessary.
The way it works with my daughter’s school is that once you registered with the disability office they will send a email to your professors saying you are registered. They do not disclose what the issue is. It is up to the student to personally talk with their professors and discuss what accommodations are needed. It is very important to have the discussion before the actual need arrives. Most professors (in our case) were are understanding.
My daughter also fought us about this but when her condition flare up she was very happy that she was registered. In most schools, it will probably be the only way to get a single room as a Freshman.
it’s a little different at my uni. I work under the disabilities officer and I have a student who uses accommodations. The disabilities officer reviews the documentation and determines what the accommodations are warranted and gives the student a card. The card, presented to the professor, notifies the prof that he or she is obligated to provide (or allow the disabilities office to provide ) the following… The student may choose not to disclose in certain classes.