Welcome to germ season, only more fun when you’re a parent of a kid away at college. Be aware, though, nothing will reduce your self-sufficient, self- reliant young adult back into a child who wants to sit in your lap with a bendy straw in a 7-Up like getting sick. So Mom and Dad, here’s a primer on sick college kids. Note: I’m a mom not a doctor. Take this with a grain of salt or glass of wine.
First, when you get the “I think I’m sick” phone call, enact your high level CSI skills. (CSI: College Sickness Investigation). Ask questions like, “On a scale of one to Beyond the Reach of Known Medical Knowledge, how bad is it?” and “Have you eaten a vegetable, consumed a liquid other than beer, or pooped in the last week?” Then walk them through standard care protocol.
Stage One – Tylenol, Advil, perhaps an over the counter cold and flu remedy like Alka-Seltzer or Nyquil. Just know that they’ll be carded when attempting to buy any of these products, like MusinexDM, that can be used to free-base methamphetamines. No, the pharmacy won’t understand that they feel far too rotten to cook meth. See if they know how to use a thermometer. Then tell stories of how they use to use rectal thermometers just so they know it could be so much worse.
If the above doesn’t fix what ails them — and if they’re calling you, they’re past that point — then go to Stage Two: campus clinic. Just know that every other kid on campus is probably sick, too, so the clinic will be booked out three weeks. Or more likely it’s after-hours. Remember, these are the same kids who cram all night because they didn’t plan ahead. They didn’t think they might need a doctor at a reasonable hour. On to stage three.
Urgent Care. Do they know where their insurance card is? Do they know how where urgent care is? You might check these things before they get sick.
Learn to differentiate the symptoms of Strep (an odor of dead weasels), Mono (mind-numbing exhaustion) and Tonsillitis (razor blades in the throat), Flu, and the common college hang-over. Expect them to have one or more of these right after finals when they come home to you. So stock up on bendy straws.
