<p>My D’s school’s health center is closed Sundays and is open until noon on Saturday. I checked the other state schools in Virginia and the hours are the same. The schools I checked in my state are about the same. Johns Hopkins also closed on Sunday. You may be surprised at the number of schools that don’t offer 24/7 care.</p>
<p>YOU NEVER KNOW! My daughter got the flu in November, she woke up at 7 feeling sick, took a shower at 10 in hopes of feeling better, lost vision in the shower, passed out after the shower, ambulance ride to the hospital at 10:30, two days in the hospital, fine now (JUST THE FLU) and does not get sick very often. I say if our children do not feel well and we can be with them all the better. Tell your friend to mind her own business.</p>
<p>You did the right thing. It could also have been meningitis!</p>
<p>When S was looking seriously at a LAC 800+ miles away, I checked out the clinic’s hours issues and found:</p>
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<p>Since I went to college 800 miles away from home and we had a flu epidemic in 1968 my freshman year, I know what it is like to have to “go it alone.”</p>
<p>mamazilla - add me to the chorus of “you did the right thing!”. Of all the worries I have about sending D off to college next year, this one hadn’t occurred to me. Your post made me check her college’s health center website - they have weekend hours AND an after hours nurse-on-call number :)</p>
<p>Maybe the snarky friend didn’t realize that there were no health services available over the weekend on campus?</p>
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<p>I’d think most students would just soldier on rather than ask for an ambulance, because many of them soldier on even when there’s an on-campus emergency room. I’m thinking back here to my undergrad days, when two housemates came down with fevers and kept refusing to go to the doctor. They finally went in after a few days. Doctors suspected mono, and everyone in the house was rushed in to get a prophylactic gamma globulin shot. It was quite something to arrive at the main desk of the health center for Massive State U, tell them my name, and have them immediately know exactly who I was and why I was there. Communicative diseases in communal living situations are no joke, as USC found out this year. </p>
<p>And sometimes what seems like the flu isn’t the flu. I was married, in grad school, and came home feeling dreadful with what I figured was something flu-like. The spouse told me to call the doctor and get an appointment. There was nothing available. I felt so miserable that I could do nothing but huddle in a chair, crying. The spouse came home, immediately called another doctor, and took me in. Good thing, it was walking pneumonia. Here I was, an adult with all kinds of financial and social resources and I still didn’t realize that I really did need to get in to the doctor pronto.</p>
<p>Pooh on Ms. Snarky Friend! If it had turned out to be something more than the flu, then you’d still be kicking yourself silly if you hadn’t helped out when you could.</p>
<p>Having a loved one miles away ill is no picnic. You were lucky enough to be so close as to be able to help out. D went to school on the other coast. When she got sick, her roomie had to help out. That’s a heck of a burden to put on someone. D said that being sick made her appreciate, like nothing before, the comforts of home.</p>
<p>H has been sick before on business trips. It’s no fun, but he has had almost 40 years of experience of knowing when a condition deteriorates into “need to get immediate medical attention.” Our kids don’t have that experience yet, but it will come in time.</p>
<p>I think you made absolutely the right decision, mamazilla. I’m sure that your daughter is, and always will be, very grateful to you. </p>
<p>Just as people long remember when their parents <em>don’t</em> help out when they’re sick. Perhaps I’m petty to have let this bother me so long, but it still upsets me a little when I remember the first time I was sick with what was eventually diagnosed as Crohn’s Disease, when I was 22 years old and in law school at Harvard. I was in the hospital for about 10 days, and was <em>extremely</em> ill, in very serious condition for a good part of that period; it took days for all the corticosteroids they pumped into me to start having an effect. When I first was admitted, I called my father in New York – my mother had died two years earlier – to tell him I was in the hospital. I really had no clear understanding at first of how sick I actually was; I remember I had tickets for the following weekend to go to the Harvard-Yale football game with some friends, and somehow thought I might still be able to go. Anyway, after that first time I called my father, not only did he not come up to Massachusetts to visit me – whenever the nurses asked if my family was coming, I made excuses for my father and said that he was “really busy at work” (as sick as I was, I was still embarrassed) – but he never called me to see how I was. Not once. When I finally got out of the hospital, I called him to explain what had happened and ask why he’d never gotten in touch. His explanation was that he assumed that because <em>he</em> didn’t hear again from <em>me,</em> that meant that I must be OK and had gotten out of the hospital; he figured I would call if things got worse. Well, OK, but it’s hard to make phone calls when you have IV’s in both arms and a 104 degree fever, and are barely conscious!</p>
<p>And here it is, more than 30 years later, and it still annoys me when I think about it. Even though that’s pretty much the way my Dad has always been, and still is at the age of 88. By now, I’m used to it. When I was 22, I wasn’t.</p>
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<p>Oh those 1950s era men…Sounds just like my dad!</p>
<p>Your friend is a jerk. </p>
<p>Family take care of each other when they are ill. That is what family do for each other when they are able. Doesn’t matter who is who. I’d bring my brother stuff when he was seriously ill and drove him to doctor appointments. I now care for my mom. My daughter did endless things for me when I was laid up with a virus last month. And so on. Has nothing to do with being grown up.</p>
<p>I agree with everyone about the snarky friend. Both of our kids have called home several times during the past 7 months-we live slightly less than 3 hours from their school. They know we will be there ASAP if they need help or don’t feel like they have received the care they needed at the infirmary. Starbright is right-the heart of the family is to care for one another-no matter our age.</p>
<p>On of my strongest memories is an aunt who lived in town, coming to my rescue the first time I got sick in college. Also of note, is my impression that my immediate family would not come as far as the next room if we kids were sick. Definitely a “suck it up” kind of upbringing (mom a nurse, dad a psychologist…). I sometimes think it’s why I am so healthy, and have almost never missed a day of school or work for illness. I don’t see it as some “bad childhood thing”, but I do feel confused about why (I think) my daughter sees me the same way(her other kids of doctor’s friends joke " what does it take to go to a hospital around here?!). She would not easily ask me for help. Also of note, she has asked for help from my sister who lives in HER college town. BIG break through for her. Now for me…</p>
<p>Physician here. Find out from the school how students should handle urgent health matters outside of clinic hours for future reference. If they have no answer help her find out local options yourself, most cities should have urgent care available, sometimes in conjunction with a hospital ER. Hopefully your health insurance would cover it and it would be a lot more convenient for her than a 2 hour trip home plus a doctor’s office trip. Our son just sent us a midnight email listing symptoms and stating he was going to the health center in the a.m., we’ll see what they say and do before one his physician parents intervenes (can guess probable diagnosis from his good report of symptoms, he even found the thermometer I had put in a first aid kit when he first went off to college). He had come home sick for Thanksgiving- told him then he should have gone to the health service, he heard us (he also had surprised me in that he got a flu shot before we reminded him to). The local physicians should know which bugs are in their community, more so than a hometown one. In your situation I would have been tempted to go to her city and take her to an open urgent care/walk in clinic there- if it’s important enough to not wait until Monday it may be wise not to make the student make a road trip.</p>
<p>The above said- it is so nice to (literally) go the extra mile(s) for a sick kid/spouse/friend. When you are sick it isn’t the time to have to grow up/be independent, being dependent is fine. Teaching her how to cope is for next time.</p>
<p>My son was sick with what seemed like the flu and I told him that he could get on a plane and come home. He sees now that he would have been okay if he had stayed at school but he was feeling so bad when he called that I couldn’t say no.</p>
<p>Different families handle things different ways, and distance is a big factor.</p>
<p>My son attended college an hour from home. He dealt with most of his medical and dental needs by coming home and using his customary doctor and dentist. But on some occasions he used the school clinic if coming home would have been inconvenient.</p>
<p>He is now at graduate school on the opposite side of the country and has already faced the problem of being sick on a weekend – when the school clinic is closed and students with urgent problems are told to go to the university’s affiliated hospital – which is on their insurance. But the problem, of course, is that some problems are urgent enough that you don’t want to wait until Monday but not urgent enough to justify a visit to a real emergency room. There’s a gap in care in this type of system that is not being filled efficiently.</p>
<p>My daughter is at college a six-hour drive from home. Her college has some sense; they have some Saturday morning clinic hours, and if kids have problems later in the weekend, they can go (probably by taxi) to an urgent care clinic in the community that their insurance covers (if they’re on the college’s insurance). </p>
<p>You may want to check to see whether your daughter’s college has some sort of weekend arrangement with an urgent care facility in the community, the way my daughter’s college does. But the answer may be no, as it is for my son’s current university.</p>
<p>As someone mentioned above, for contagious diseases, there may be an advantage in using facilities in the college community because the doctors there know what’s going around. For other problems, though, using your hometown health care providers may have the advantage that they will often accommodate themselves to the needs of an established patient. While my son was at the one-hour-away university, he developed a very painful dental problem. Our hometown dentist juggled the schedule to get him an appointment the same day and even did the root canal that it turned out that he needed – that very afternoon. I doubt that an unfamiliar dentist in the college community would have been as accommodating.</p>
<p>Shrinkrap - Your post made me laugh. My dad was an MD and a father of 7. We were definitely told to get on with it - not too much sympathy going around. I only missed a few days in elementary school for some non-immunized illness. (With 7 kids, it was a bit difficult to keep track of who got what.) I did not miss one day of HS and, incidentally, not a day of work since I’ve been back in the workforce - about 9 years. I’m also a school nurse so I don’t take a lot of b<strong><em>s</em></strong> from my students. However, if they are REALLY ill, I give them all my sympathy and the best of care.</p>
<p>Thanks for all of your support. Very happy to say that she’s very much improved. I’m driving her back in a little while. In time to make a 9:30 class!! </p>
<p>For those of you who wondered, the school does have a protocol in place for weekend health emergencies, involving RA’s and campus police and the local hospital. also, I don’t jump every time she calls with aches and pains. I could tell over the phone that this wasn’t an ordinary cold, and i knew that I could get her in to see her doctor that Saturday. She was out flat for four days, and I know she could not have managed making the 3 block walk to the dining hall, especially when a trip downstairs for juice wiped her out. I also thought that she should be removed from the dorm as a matter of public health. She’s been in contact with her professors who all seem quite accommodating. thanks again!</p>
<p>Does Snarky Friend know that people die from influenza. And sick, sometime near delirious teens don’t often make good decisions about when to get to the hospital. Neither do their friends. </p>
<p>Go with your gut every time. You know when your own kid is really sick.</p>
<p>Glad she is better and getting back to class.</p>
<p>mamazilla, I too have grappled with this. My oldest daughter got a stomach bug the day she was taking her last final in her first semester of freshman year. The next morning , she was to fly home. I almost flew up to fly back with her because when she gets such a bug, it is a bit worse for her due to a reflux issue that is excrutiatingly painful for her.
She decided to just fly alone, but it was awful for me to be so far away.
Also, just a month ago, my younger daughter got sick at school. I offered to come up and help her but she opted to go it alone.
I agree with the other posters that your friend is insensitive. Are you friends with my oldest sister ? ;)</p>
<p>I agree and if my kids were within a couple hours and really, really sick I would go to them in a heartbeat. My S was very ill his freshman year fall and while the crud was going around campus he just didn’t take it easy and it developed into other things…he did ultimately go to the health service and his school has an on-call doc from town who he saw, but going to get the scripts filled and all that stuff plus get to the hospital for a chest xray while you are sick as a dog is no fun for the kids. His off campus work kept calling him and begging him to come in and to top it off and all this happened the week or so before first fall freshman finals. Lots of cell phone calls …he definitely wanted his “mommy” but 1,000+ miles is just too far to drive and when all is said and done he knows now how to navigate the health care system! Those freshman dorms are just breeding grounds for every crud going around and the kids bring in germs from all over the country I think. We affectionately call it the $600 cold in the family since everything was “out of network” for our insurance. I showed him all the medical bills and told him if he ever got sick again to e-mail his profs and stay in bed for a day or two. I think seeing the bills was an eye openener, too and a good lesson about the importance of insurance. I relized the kids had grown up running to the doc anytime someone needed to and never really saw any $$ change hands. In their pea brains they probably think medical care is free!</p>