<p>I have to answer and I don’t mean to be argumentative:</p>
<ol>
<li> You are his sister, so it is your instinct and your perspective is to protect him. You’ve lived with him all of your life so your perspective deals with seeing him take care of his diabetes. Most people don’t grow up with siblings who are diabetic.</li>
<li> The people on this post are being honest and taking the perspective of themselves and their children: a roommate should not be in the position to be responsible for another roommate, except to save a life, but you didn’t want that answer, so you are lashing out at people who know they would be unfamiliar with how they would help a diabetic (who wasn’t previously known as being diabetic).<br></li>
</ol>
<p>People here are being genuinely honest. They’re not being cold, they’re just being sincere about their children’s INABILITY to read the emergency situation and then care for another person when these kids can barely care for themselves. How is a strange 18 year-old kid supposed to know your brother’s complete medical history, and, that your brother might have a seizure, so roommate should not be allowed to move out no matter what the reason? </p>
<ol>
<li> There’s all kinds of crap that kids take at college that could result in something that looks seizure-like. You’re missing the point that EVERY person here, and kids, would respond IMMEDIATELY to something that didn’t look right AND call the authorities, but the problem is that your original and subsequent posts show an EXPECTATION of responsibility on the part of a roommate and the dorm: </li>
</ol>
<p><<“having a roommate was always part of the plan”>> This was part of your family’s plan, not anyone else’s.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Now that you’ve read multiple posts and the general consensus, that roommates wouldn’t know how to help, you’re doing a bunch of back-paddling to try to modify what you’ve said earlier. BTW male roommates respond differently to roommate situations than do female roommates. Society seems to deem that males are expected to be “adults” and self-sufficient at 18, while female roommates think they have to be friends immediately with roommates.</p></li>
<li><p>I work with high school students who need help in reading facial expressions and body language. Kids who are 18, barely know how to read and respond to social situations, why are they not allowed to have the right to switch rooms if they choose to? Because it wasn’t part of the plan? Your family should have advised Housing that your brother was medically fragile and needed to be in specialty dorm for medically fragile kids. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>I don’t get the argument and the expectation of babysitting, since your brother appears to be doing well.</p>
<p>OP if you are still reading this thread, please know that others share your concern for your brother, both because he is introverted and a Type 1 diabetic. My sons are engineering/CS personalities and are definitely not outgoing so I (not them) was hoping that they would have nice roommates who might click with them, at least for the first couple of weeks, as going to events by yourself is not easy for introverts. I didn’t expect my sons’ roommates to be best friends, but hoped that they would help each other out acclimating themselves to the campus. I too would be upset for them if their roommate left them alone. I would understand it, but feel bad for them. Also, my oldest son was found to be a Type 1 diabetic after he came home from spring break his freshman year. After a 5 day stay at the hospital and another week off of school to set up doctors and support near his campus, my son went back to school. We were very glad he had a roommate. We did not expect the roommate to do anything but its peace of mind knowing someone is there. Most diabetics are not medically fragile enough to be in a specialty dorm, if that is even a thing. Parents and sisters of diabetics don’t expect babysitting (we don’t do that at home) but it is nice to know that another student is at least going in and out of the room.</p>
<p>People pay extra to have a single. Both of my kids asked to have a single freshman year. They left their doors open when they wanted to socialize, and closed when they wanted some privacy - study, down time, sleep. Their school was very cold, so they very much appreciated their ability to study in their rooms when it was freezing out. D2 had a roommate sophomore year. They got along, but didn’t socialize outside of their room.</p>
<p>As others have said, try to come up a way to monitor your brother yourself. My mother lives by herself now my father has passed away. She calls me whenever she is going out and I check up on her to make sure she is home safe. We have installed alarm system for her home. We don’t expect her friends or neighbors to take care of her. Likewise for your brother. Sounds like your brother is managing.</p>
<p>My S’s freshman roommate was diagnosed at Christmas as having T1 diabetes, and took winter quarter off to learn how to manage it, so S had an unexpected single for that quarter. My S is responsible and level-headed and obviously would help a roommate in obvious trouble, but he’s not an expert in diabetes and it wasn’t his responsibility to look after his roommate’s condition. Not in a mean way, of course, but he’s not a caretaker. </p>
<p>I understand the concern for your brother. Diabetic episodes are frightening. However, parents send their kids to college to get an education, not to take on the responsibility for someone else’s child. Did your family inform your brother’s roommate, or his roommate’s parents, about your plan to see if they were comfortable with it? Did they outline exactly what their expectations are? (I’m assuming they amount only to casual observation and calling 911 if there appears to be an issue, not any sort of diagnosis or administration of an emergency injection). The fact that your family’s concern about your brother’s diabetes is so acute that you planned for him not to room alone suggests to me that his condition is unstable or he’s unable to manage it on his own. If that’s the case, perhaps he’s not ready to go away to college yet.</p>
<p>Introverts would almost always prefer a single. This gives them control over when they can be alone to recharge and when they are among people. I’d celebrate an unexpected single for the price of a double.</p>
<p>18 year old freshmen may not react well or quickly if they find their roommate in a coma and I’m not sure they would know it’s a diabetic coma. If II have no clue what “has a low in the middle of the night” means, I certainly would not count on a college freshman knowing. Just knowing that one’s roommate has these expectations would cause me to ask for a room switch (I’m not saying this is what happened, this is my own reaction).</p>
<p>I don’t understand the reactions either. I don’t have any medical problems and have graduated college, but my parents also have a peace of mind knowing that I’m living with roommates, because in case anything were to happen to me, I’d have someone there who could help me. Similarly, it makes me feel better that my parents aren’t living by themselves. I don’t think that’s unreasonable, I’d do my best to help if any of my roommates, or anyone around me, were having some type of emergency medical troubles.</p>
<p>Also, different people have different preferences about roommates, and some people actually prefer to have roommates. I enjoy having roommates, and in fact when I was living in a single I was more depressed. I am someone who most people would consider introverted and shy.</p>
<p>That being said, I’m sure the OP’s brother will be fine. Maybe this can motivate him to make even more friends, and he can find roommates for later years and semesters. I also second the suggestion to talk to the housing office. </p>
<p>One thing - the OP notes that her brother “didn’t know where to put his towel after a shower”? So he was sharing a double with a private bathroom? SWEET! We were lucky that we had a sink in our dorm room, and the bathrooms were down the hall. Some had showers, sometimes you had to change floors to find a large bathroom with a shower (the dorms were not accessible so there were no “full bathrooms” with a shower sink and toilet).</p>
<p>As for the diabetes thing - I agree with the be realistic advice. No one can monitor him 24/7, he can check his sugars and try not to abuse himself regarding eating or exercising a lot more than usual. If he had a roommate who was never in the room, he clearly would not have any help if he had an incident while the roommate was out. Does your brother have a medic alert bracelet? Does he always carry glucose pills or Skittles (there are journal articles about chewing Skittles working better than glucose pills) on him? Does he carry insulin on him - maybe if he doesn’t have a pump, he might think about getting one when spring semester lets out and he has time to adjust to it (YMMV, I’m not a medical doctor etc.)? </p>
<p>If my new roommate had diabetes, I would want them to tell me because I might see them injecting insulin or if they passed out, I would know to call 911 and not just assume the roommate is drunk. At my HS, a kid a year older than me was seen injecting his thigh “with something” and another student reported him for possible drug use. So then he had to tell everybody that he was diabetic, something he was trying to hide.</p>
<p>And for the changing rooms thing - the OP is learning about that. Of course anyone can change rooms for any reason, as long as they get approval. I talked to my sophomore year roommate about one of us moving out, because we had totally different schedules and frankly, she was getting up at 6 am and waking me up early, and I rarely went to bed before midnight so wanted to sleep until 9 am. Together we figured out that it would be best if she moved out and I paid the rest of her contract (it was about mid-year). I was lucky my parents could afford to pay off the contract. I ended up living in a single, with a single bed and a sink, with my boyfriend junior year. He was in a double in his frat house, and left some of his stuff there, like winter clothes until they were needed. He had FA to pay for the room in the frat house, so essentially we both paid for that spot after we graduated, got married, and started paying off student loans.</p>
<p>Good luck to your brother - it sounds totally unrelated to him why his roommate moved out. It almost sounds like the guy fell in love , or maybe found someone from his town who he had wanted to room with in the first place but missed the deadline. It sounds like the roommate is happier where he is, and in my opinion, your brother won the lottery.</p>
<p>I think many people (myself included) are considering what the practical situation would look like. There’s a difference between having a vague feeling of reassurance that your relative is around someone else “just in case”, and specifically planning on having a roommate that is close enough to your relative to be able to quickly identify an emergency situation. The OP listed specific situations that could happen and implied that having a roommate there would make them feel more reassured and my immediate question was why? I can understand having just a gut feeling of being reassured, but I’m a logical thinker and immediately started considering what the situation would look like. Maybe I’m severely underestimating college freshmen, but I don’t have a lot of faith in someone unfamiliar with type 1 diabetes to be able to recognize the difference between a coma and being asleep, to be attentive enough to recognize signs of a low, or to be confident enough to act on it without assuming that everything’s probably fine. And I don’t have a lot of faitb that quick action would be taken even if the roommate eventually decides that something’s not right.</p>
<p>OP-
There were times when I went several days without seeing my college roommate without either of us telling each other where we were. If I saw my roommate lying in bed in the middle of the day, I would never think that anything was wrong. And even if they did, his roommate may not even see it until it’s too late and it may take much more time for him to recognize that he should probably get help. Even moreso considering your brother didn’t even tell him about it. I just don’t think it’ll make a significant difference whether he has a roommate or not, and presumably he is going to have to live on his own at some point. He might not always have someone with him.</p>
<p>I was never implying that you expected a caretake for your brother 24/7. But it definitely sounded like (and still sounds like), that having a roommate was definitely part of your plan, and I personally don’t think it was something that you could have (as you learned) ever counted on and provisions should have been put in place assuming that the 18-year-old stranger he was placed with would not be dependable to take immediate or appropriate actions. And the fact that your brother brought this up when requestinf a new roommate, it certainly sounds like he thought others would share this expectation.</p>
<p>It’s not being cold towards your brother. He sounds like a great kid who’s doing well. And it sounds like you care a lot about him and his health. If anything, I’m being cold towards college freshmen, but I just don’t have a lot of faith in them, especially concerning a random stranger they just met and know nothing about.</p>
<p>I also don’t entirely understand the reactions rebeccar is getting. I live alone, and have considered the fact that if G-d forbid anything happened to me, no one would know. I have a close friend who is only alive right now because she happened to be visiting home the day she passed out from complications from a brain tumor she didn’t yet know she had. She needed emergency surgery. If she hadn’t been found ASAP, she would have died.</p>
<p>No one is expecting a roommate to be a medical attendant. But if someone else is living with you, they are more likely to notice if something is wrong - if you don’t come home one night, or if you suddenly faint, or if you don’t wake up with your alarm. This is highly unlikely to ever be necessary, but somewhat less unlikely in the case of someone with diabetes.</p>
<p>That being said, rebeccar, it is still highly unlikely that your adult brother, who knows how to manage his illness, will ever be in such a situation, and as other people have said, there is not even close to a guarantee that the presence of a roommate would make a difference in an emergency. So, the actual difference in safety is marginal, although I completely understand your anxiety, and can see why the idea of your brother having a roommate was at least a small comfort to your family. The suggestion upthread of having him check in with a quick text in the morning sounds like a good one, though.</p>
<p>I’ve posted about this before in the past, but it is a relevant situation. When my D1 was two weeks into freshman year (actually less than 2 full weeks) she became deathly ill suddenly and was taken by ambulance to the hospital. Not alcohol or drug related. Her roommate, whom she hadn’t previously known, called the RA, 911 and me. She kept me on the phone for the whole ride to the hospital, which was something she had no obligation to do and I will always bless her name. I think the reason she acted as she did was because the situation was so completely unambiguous. She didn’t have to assess “is it diabetes or drunk” “is it diabetes or too many late nights.” I would think that any decent person would act in an unambiguous situation (although maybe not as attentively as my D’s friend), but with diabetes judgment does come into play, so other people outisde of family and close friends can’t be counted on to keep the diabetic safe.</p>
<p>OP- you have hopefully learned a lot from your thread. Many different topics covered. Remember- it is your brother’s life, not yours and the rest of his family’s. He also is learning a lot about being an independent adult. You are learning as well. There will be missteps along the way. Learn from this and add it to you repertoire of how to do things et al.</p>
<p>PS- I’m a physician. Patients need to be responsible for themselves. It seems as though your brother is on the learning curve for being an independent adult instead of the child/younger brother looked after by family. Again, no roommate should be expected to add the burden of looking after your brother’s needs, they are all busy becoming independent adults just like your brother. The RA needs to know and can assist in informing his floor mates to notice any strange behavior as possibly related to his DM and not other factors they might ignore or misinterpret.</p>
<p>In retrospect, it might have been a good idea to request a diabetic roommate, who would be knowledgeable about his condition. But I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect any roommate to do more than call 911 should someone be obviously ill and unable to care for themselves.</p>
<p>At dorms I’ve experienced, one keeps one’s towel in the dorm room even when using the classic shared hall bath.</p>
<p>Our dorms had towel racks on the closet doors. In fact, it was the occasion on which my roommate hunted me down, going from room to room, in order to find out whether I had moved her towels, that convinced me and everyone else that she was very, very strange. (For the record, she took the top rack, and instead of folding her towels neatly, always left them dripping down over mine. So on this occasion, when I took my towel off the lower rack, hers fell off, so I picked it up, folded it neatly, and put it back on her rack. What a crime.)</p>
<p>I don’t know if this tidbit will be helpful or scary - but I have adult-onset Type I diabetes. I don’t think it’s that easy for an innocent bystander/ roommate/ onlooker to tell when someone goes low, especially during the middle of the night. I mean, I sometimes go low (even VERY low) overnight, and it’s not always noticeable to my husband, who’s sleeping 6 inches away from me. If I had to depend on him to help me out when I go low, I might as well check myself into the hospital now, as a precaution. </p>
<p>What I guess I’m saying is that the mere presence of a roommate may not help at all with the going-low-in-the-middle-of-the-night scenario. </p>
<p>At some schools what OP’s brother has is called a ‘dingle’ - it’s a double that has become a single by virtue of one roommate moving out and it’s a highly desirable room. Most kids would love a dingle. Even very social students appreciate having some small private space at college, where everything else is public/shared. And even kids who are close with their roommates recognize that living with another person and having to negotiate spared space is always more challenging than having your own room. When the perceived insult wears off, I bet this student ends up reveling in his space and freedom. </p>
<p>One of my kids got very sick (with what turned out to be giardia from a hiking trip) during a weekend early in her freshman year. Despite having a roommate and 4 more suitemates, she laid on the bathroom floor throwing up (etc!) for hours before anyone ever found her. Eventually the health center was called, they took her to the ER and it was fine and well handled. But at no point did the roommate ever show up - just noting that having a roommate is not a really good health insurance policy, and probably someone with a chronic condition needs a pager or other provision. </p>
<p>Out of curiosity, is there a software app that can detect these diabetics coma and alert people? It sounds like a potential iwatch’s application.</p>
, or maybe found someone from his town who he had wanted to room with in the first place but missed the deadline. It sounds like the roommate is happier where he is, and in my opinion, your brother won the lottery.</p>
and it’s a highly desirable room. Most kids would love a dingle. Even very social students appreciate having some small private space at college, where everything else is public/shared. And even kids who are close with their roommates recognize that living with another person and having to negotiate spared space is always more challenging than having your own room. When the perceived insult wears off, I bet this student ends up reveling in his space and freedom. </p>