<p>For parents who are worried about true health or other emergencies where your child is unable to speak for him or herself and you want to be involved in treatment decisions, I don’t think a HIPAA waiver will be all that helpful. As far as I know, HIPAA only gives you information-not rights to make decisions about treatment. You may want to have S or D execute a Health Care POA/Proxy/Directive naming you as POA. Of course, S or D must be 18 or older to execute such a document. I suggest using the form for the state of S or D’s college. This is a form that most if not all states have available online</p>
<p>If S or D is under 18, you should still have power to make treatment decisions in your role as parent. Assuming you get the info.</p>
<p>If child is able to speak for himself or herself at the time of injury/illness, he/she can execute HIPAA waiver at that time.</p>
<p>On looking for roommate info==you could google them…</p>
<p>Our student is easily found in google…articles written about kiddo and awards etc…so if a parent wanted to know something about our student–it’s easily found.
And many highschools publish stuff about plays, awards days, sports, etc.
So even if the FB page is student eyes only–you might get a bit of info that way.</p>
<p>If you get a HIPPA signed, then who keeps it? School, parent? I ask because if school keeps it, won’t it only be applicable to school health care? What about hospitalizations? </p>
<p>My DS is totally laid back about the entire roommate thing. I keep dropping suttle hints (you need to find out if they want to rent a micro/fridge)–pretty suttle, right? His school only allows you to rent these. Otherwise you can bring your own fridge, but no microwaves allowed. Who knows if I’ll ever get any decisions like that out of him before school starts. Only if one of the other guys mentions it first. I know my DS thinks it would not be cool to ask those sorts of questions, although he’d be glad if the others asked it–go figure.</p>
<p>Anyone else have the “pleasure” of shopping with their DS. It was about as much fun as sticking a hot poker in my eye. Granted he’s not been feeling well, but sheesh! Couldn’t get much out of him, and he wants to “wait and see” about almost everything. So what did we get? A pillow, hangars, fan, closet rod extender and a small ironing board. Pretty exciting, huh? The other stuff–towels, iron, etc I guess I will go buy on my own–with his blessing. I anticipate him having a large list of “we should have gotten” once he settles in. My main goal was for him to see everything and stick it in the back of his brain so when he needs something he will have an idea of what will work. I guess I should be happy he wants an iron and ironing board. ;)</p>
<p>My D is supposed to find out her roommate information tomorrow. We just found out that the school bought new furniture for one of the dorms to allow for more triples. Unfortunately, it was a dorm that she wanted, since the doubles were so large. Hopefully, she will be lucky and get a double, since we did place the deposit relatively early and the assignments are based upon deposit dates. Like many schools, the freshman class is larger than usual, and they did not go to the wait list at all.</p>
<p>I can not even imagine some of the things that go on at college these days. (I sound like my mother! When did that happen??) I remember going a week before school started my freshman year to take a 2 credit class. I honestly do not recall even knowing who my roommate was until she walked in the door. I definitely do not recall any type of big orientation. We showed up, unloaded the car, and Mom and my sister drove off. I also remember being on a mixed age floor with freshman through seniors. I did notice that all of the schools we visited had freshman only dorms, which may have come about with the increase of the drinking age across the US.</p>
<p>D does get to meet some players from the field hockey team this weekend, since she is playing in a tournament. She met a few upper classmen on the team about amonth ago, but no freshman. She really liked the girls on the team and they made her feel very welcome. Hopefully, there will be at least one freshman at the event this weekend.</p>
<p>VAMom - I am in the same boat regarding S and roommate. They don’t have to rent a fridge but since we’re in Calif and roommate is from Arizona, I kind of figure we don’t want to do storage. But getting S to contact RM is impossible. </p>
<p>This morning I “mentioned” going shopping to look around for dorm room stuff and you would have thought I told we were going bra shopping. LOL. Have a feeling we’ll be shipping stuff to Penn later…</p>
<p>VAMom2015, I went with DS this weekend but he was really into getting the things for his room. I did notice he was one of the only guys out doing the shopping. All the other M.O.B’s kept coming up to us and asking him his opinion or would he use this or that, what was he actually getting etc. haha. But the girls were all there with the moms, mostly arguing about what they actually needed and how were they going to carry all of that stuff, where were they going to put all that stuff…so maybe you are better off going alone :-)</p>
<p>We’re intentionally going very minimal at this point, and figuring we can buy additional items once we get there, and/or ship stuff later. It will be easier to know what he wants/needs once he’s moved in all his essentials. And none of us are big shoppers, so going to browse dorm room stuff, forget it. (Besides we live in a rural area and have nowhere to go do that even if we wanted to, without driving at least an hour.)</p>
<p>Birthday Celebration: My daughter’s birthday is a few days after we drop her off at Vassar. She doesn’t know anyone there. Any suggestions on how to celebrate?</p>
<p>lassen, my DS’s birthday is a couple of weeks after drop off. I asked back in post 705 about ideas for getting a birthday cake delivered for my son to share with his floor-mates, and got a number of good replies. We will probably (a) have a cake delivered, and (b) send a box with lots of small gifts, and probably a candy bar cake (also mentioned in the early 700s in reply to my query).</p>
<p>mathmomvt - Am so with you!!! We are so not shoppers so I thought we’d take his gf and look around. One of the few stores we do have is BBB so I thought it wouldn’t hurt…did not happen. Amazon Prime…here we come.</p>
<p>capenn15 - every so often reading this thread I think we are being negligent (jk) in not doing enough shopping in advance, so glad to hear we are not alone :)</p>
<p>mathmomvt - ^^^ that’s the reason I think I wanted to go to BBB…thought I was being a “bad” parent by not going with him…but am realizing that in reality have a S who just isn’t worried about it all and neither should I. So glad there’s more than just me feeling that way. Penn is just so far away from Calif…I know he’ll “just die” without my help (jk jk jk).</p>
<p>capenn15 during NSO they have a bus trip to ikea (10:30 at night) and he can pick up any room things he and his roommate decide that they need and didn’t bring with them.</p>
<p>I remember seeing that parentofpeople…thanks for the reminder. He’ll be at PennQuest all day and wonder how awake he’ll be at 10:30 pm LOL. We are planning to be around the campus on move-in day but he won’t. I went to preview but my H didn’t so he’ll want to hear/see. We are hoping to see S that afternoon but are not counting on it. Time is moving tooooo fast.</p>
<p>We are having the following drawn up for our son and updating ours now that he is 18.
Living Will, Health Care Durable Power of Attorney and Designation of Health Care Surrogate which all relate to a person’s wishes in case he/she cannot speak for him/herself.
Durable Power of Attorney which allows one person to act for another even if second person is incapacitated.</p>
<p>We’ll get the FERPA and HIPPA documents signed at school. We will all have copies of each document as needed. In addition, our doctors will have copies of those medically related.</p>
<p>None of this is being done to invade each others privacy; however, until such time as my son has his own family, we feel that someone needs to be able to speak and act for him if he can’t. He would not want a hospital denying us access to his medical situation should he not be in a position to allow access. He has equal access to our medical situation should both my husband and I be unable to speak for ourselves. Hopefully we won’t ever face these situations, but I try to be prepared for what may or may not happen.</p>
<p>Got another solicitation from RH linens today in the mail along with a notice that BB&B will have a tent set up for those last minute items during orientation. Also got info on bed loft thing and fridge/micro rental. I am leaning more and more towards the rental for about $175 per school year. It just makes like easier at this point.</p>
<p>Lassen, you probably know about the Culinary Institute very near Vassar. Perhaps that would be a good place for a birthday meal, or maybe something from their bakery.</p>
<p>Here’s the thing I don’t really get about the health care proxy for an 18yo: If an 18yo unmarried young adult cannot speak for himself, and does NOT have a health care proxy or equivalent set up, who would be asked to make decisions on his behalf? Wouldn’t it be the parents? So does an 18yo only need a HCP if he wants to designate someone other than a parent as his proxy, or if he wants to give one particular parent that responsibility over the other? If the child is fine with the parents figuring it out, does he need a proxy at all? Does it help in any way?</p>