<p>I'm probably just thinking out loud here, but what better place? My son has ADHD. Not just "gaze out the window" ADHD, but where he can hardly function without medication. He is completely loopy and you'd think he was on drugs until his meds kick in...then he's 'normal'.</p>
<p>Although I sent him to school with a prescription from our local doctor, he ran out of meds last Friday and then thought he couldn't fill the Rx over the weekend (even though I gave him the address of the 24 hour Walgreens). As of yesterday he still hadn't done it but was feeling horrible ... he finally took Safe Rides to the drugstore last night and did it.</p>
<p>I was very close to calling the Student Health/CAPS center to say "this kid needs help." I just don't want to be over involved... but I also don't want this to happen again. He went to class and thankfully labs don't start until next week, but I know he could not have been functional.</p>
<p>We were given the name of Integrated Behavioral Health as a local place that can prescribe for him going forward, but he cancelled the appt yesterday because it was farther away than he thought and he wasn't going to be able to get there on time. They charged me $265 for the cancellation! Argh!!! He's supposed to go on Friday now.</p>
<p>I'm not sure what my question is... other than should I get involved at all? This is when it's tough being so far away.</p>
<p>Always tough to answer this for other families because it really isn’t a generalizable question. But with that caveat in mind, I think medical issues fall on the “get involved” side of the equation, at least at first. Of course at some point he has to take responsibility for his own care, but it isn’t surprising this won’t happen all at once. Perhaps it needs to be made very clear that this is the expectation, but it isn’t surprising in the least that there are bumps in the road this early on. As we have discussed on this site before, this is all pretty new to them, especially in the context that they are trying to absorb a whole new paradigm for how they live their lives. New “home”, new friends, new expectations in class, more unstructured time than they ever had, lots of decisions to make with imperfect and limited information, responsibility for tasks both large (as in this medication issue) and small such as laundry, etc.</p>
<p>One thing that does often get overlooked is making sure the RA knows about his situation. Now to be sure, some RA’s are great and others less so, but they should at least be aware so that if they see him being “loopy” in the future, they can at least not assume it is alcohol or drugs. In the best case, it would be comfortable for the RA to ask on an occasional basis “Hey X, you able to get your meds OK?”. You are within your rightful parameters as a parent to go through housing and make sure this is known by the RA, if he doesn’t already.</p>
<p>Mav – my kid handles this stuff on campus through CAPS at Student Health, which synchs up with our doctor at home. Then gets prescriptions filled at the Walgreens. It has worked well for us. Very convenient to have the 2-3 doc appts per semester done right on campus. My kid (who is a soph) had the check-in/back on campus appt with the doc last week. My impression is that they see tons of ADD kids in there.</p>
<p>Thanks guys. Northwesty… I didn’t think we could do that, based on what they told us at orientation? I’m not sure why they said we had to make an appointment with a local facility but they did.</p>
<p>That said, my son made an appointment with Integrated Behavioral Health down there and he had to cancel it yesterday. They charged me $275!!! He rescheduled for tomorrow and now I’m upset that he did, because I’d just send him to CAPS. They actually left me a VM saying that he had “bought an hour of the doctor’s time”… what a bizarre thing to say. </p>
<p>FC, I will reach out to the RA. I’m not sure where to find her contact information? Is it obvious and I’m not seeing it?</p>
<p>I know I am a totally over involved parent and have completely enabled my child, that being said, I couldn’t stop cold turkey when she went to college. We are filling her prescriptions at home and sending them to her. With time, we can probably come up with a different system, but for now…whatever works.</p>
<p>Mavitale, let me know if you can’t find out how to contact your son’s RA. My D is an RA in Warren, so maybe she can help. She also understands ADHD stuff, as her younger brother has it. Her brother sounds a lot like your son, so she’ll understand the need to get meds.</p>
<p>mavitale - I don’t think there is a published list of who the RA’s are by location, so you have to check with housing. Try this guy:</p>
<p>Ryan-Jasen Henne
Associate Director for Residential Education
<a href=“mailto:rhenne@tulane.edu”>rhenne@tulane.edu</a></p>
<p>There is another slot within the housing staff that looks like it is responsible for the RA training, etc. but it appears to be a vacant position at the moment, or at least they haven’t updated the website if they have filled it. Ryan is in a parallel level position, so he should be able to help or point you in the right direction.</p>
<p>Since you have the name, you can also get the email address from the tulane.edu webpage, upper right, next to the search box. It has a bubble to fill in to for Phone book that gives you students email addresses.</p>
<p>So… I got the Behavioral Health place to refund the cancellation fee, but “only if he knows he can never come back here.” WHAT?? That is the nuttiest thing I’ve ever heard.</p>
<p>In the meantime, CAPS says they need current and comprehensive testing in order to provide the monthly appointments. That won’t work, as he hasn’t been tested for years. I feel like just sending him to their office when he’s not on his meds. :)</p>
<p>Anyway… I’ll have to figure out what to do. He has to be seen once a month, so even though I could get the Rx from his doctor here that won’t fulfill the requirements for him to be seen. His doctor is a great guy so maybe he’ll have a solution for us.</p>
<p>“In the meantime, CAPS says they need current and comprehensive testing in order to provide the monthly appointments. That won’t work, as he hasn’t been tested for years.”</p>
<p>If you spring for the testing (like I did last year) CAPS works GREAT. You have four years worth of monthly appointments to deal with, why not get your kid set up with a doc convienently located on campus? A doc, by the way, that spends most of his time dealing with the typical trials and tribulations of Tulane students and who can interface with other TU departments if you want your kid to have any accomodations, coaching or other support for their ADD or other condition.</p>
<p>I suspect your doc back home can pretty easily check whatever boxes are necessary for your kid to be treated at CAPS. Your mileage may vary, but accessing the doc on campus seems like a way better solution than trying to get an RA to handle a medical issue…</p>
<p>Just to be clear, I wasn’t suggesting the RA “handle the medical issue”. But they are supposed to be aware of issues that might be non-obvious and might affect the welfare of a student and/or others on the floor. I don’t know if this falls into that category or not, I have no experience with ADHD and their medications. I was simply reacting to the description mavitale presented.</p>
<p>Oh, I certainly didn’t think that FC. I just let her know what happens when he doesn’t have his meds. She responded right away thanking me for the info, and said she’d also make sure he has a buddy to go to the pharmacy with. :)</p>
<p>Great, that is the level of response I would hope for from a good RA. I hope you get the CAPS thing worked out, it sounds like a great way to deal with it, from what northwesty describes.</p>
<p>Well, our local (NY) doctor said he can just do phone appointments, I can pick up the Rx and send the meds down. When my son comes home in December we can decide to do the testing and this way he has a doctor on campus who can help him if anything urgent comes up. </p>
<p>Thanks everyone for helping me through this. And whatever you do, don’t go to that Integrated Behavioral Health place. Don’t these people know about the INTERNET?? They are so afraid of losing $167 (which is what insurance would have reimbursed them for the appt) that now they’ll lose a monthly patient and everyone else that reads my ‘reviews’ online. Dumb.</p>