<p>^ Apparently not anymore. I worked in the vestiges of such a set up while in medical school twenty years ago, but on another thread about RA duties during student illness, it became pretty clear that this is no longer common.</p>
<p>When my D’s roomie had an appendectomy, the RA DID call, and someone facilitated the absences from class. I am pretty sure the surgery happened at the university hospital.</p>
<p>My D also lives in her sorority house and when I read that the OPs D was in a house I for one felt better. I know her house is more home like than a dorm with lots of sisters around all the time and more than just a roommate keeping an eye on her. for anyone looking for it I highly recommend Grandmas chicken soup in Boston. they ship everywhere. I’ve sent to my S several times. He always likes me to include the Challah bread which is amazing according to him.</p>
<p>Hi again, OP here and I’m breathing so much better. Just got off the phone with D and her voice sounds strong and she’s in good humor. As ebeeeee mentioned, she has sisters all around, all happy to help. She has a comfy bed and was happily nibbling on the bread that came with the soup I sent and someone was off to get her a bowl and spoon. She’s allowed to eat what she wants but doesn’t have an appetite so will be taking it easy…she’s just a little uncomfortable so the pain’s very tolerable. Thank you to everyone for (virtually) holding my hand through this stressful time! Ironically, my D was originally scheduled to study in Paris this semester and ended up not–can’t quite imagine how I’d be feeling if she were abroad!</p>
<p>Sending you good thoughts for your daughter’s quick recovery!</p>
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<p>Infirmaries have gone the way of the dinosaurs.</p>
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Oh well, I have some catching up to do :D</p>
<p>I guess it just seemed in all this growing helicopter parent, teacup child environment that schools would be ADDING hand-holding services instead of taking them away!</p>
<p>S’s urban midsize school doesn’t have an infirmary either. They do have a great health care center with x-ray, lab, etc., but are only open M-F 8 to 5 (or something like that). I remember even my very small LAC there was a 24 hour infirmary.</p>
<p>There are a few dinosaurs left. D’s student health center includes a 10-bed infirmary. But if you are very sick at all they send you to the nearby medical school hospital, which is a major comprehensive medical center.</p>
<p>One other thought, and I know she is 21 and surrounded by her sisters, but if the sorority has a house mother, you might want to call her and just ask her if she can just watch over your DD a bit.</p>
<p>Also, make sure your daughter understands who to notify about her illness. At some schools, it may be necessary to also notify the health center officials. You want to do this in case she has difficulty with any of her professors.</p>
<p>So sorry to hear this happened to your daughter but it sounds like things are going as well as possible and that she has many who are helping her at her sorority house. </p>
<p>I have a daughter who is in grad school 3000 miles away. She is on winter break and she is coaching a college ski team. On her first day on the job, she had a ski accident and badly fractured her wrist two weeks ago. They thought she would need surgery and I was waiting until she saw an orthopedist the next day and then was gonna fly out. But that doctor said he wanted to wait a week to see if the lining up of the bones stayed in place and if they did, she might avoid surgery and get a cast or otherwise have to have surgery. So, I was in a holding pattern for a week and would fly out as soon as I heard. She wasn’t alone as she is staying at the ski resort area in a ski house with the ski team she is coaching and so had a lot of help. But for the surgery, she would go back to where her school was and I would go out. She was very lucky because she ended up getting put in a cast ten days later (a week ago) and I no longer had to fly out but I was surely going to if it came to surgery. I know she would not have asked me to come but I would feel compelled to go for something like that and to just be there and also for the recovery in her apartment (she lives alone). But that was avoided. Meanwhile, this normally very healthy daughter (who by the way, has skied and raced her entire life and never been hurt before), called yesterday on her way to the ski area to coach the team this weekend and kinda laughingly said to me, “I have had another health problem!” (knowing how unusual this is for her) and told me of an abscess she developed with infection and went to the university’s medical hospital to be seen and is now on antibiotics and hopefully that will do the trick or else it will have to be drained (this is totally unrelated to her fracture and in another area of the body. </p>
<p>While not any sort of emergency, when my other daughter was in college, she was working in a job at the college for the summer and living in a dorm and had her wisdom teeth out and I flew down for that and stayed with her in her dorm room (it had an extra bed and she was the only one in the room). </p>
<p>Hope your daughter’s recovery goes smoothly.</p>
<p>As hard as it is to stay home, there is merit in letting older kids (say 20+) try to deal with some of these issues on their own. I know I would be jumping out of my skin, too, had I received this kind of phone call, but for relatively minor health problems (and even a routine surgery, I think), it’s good for them to learn to handle emergencies, with us on the phone, for sure. It empowers them to know they can do it. My daughter is currently in Thailand for at least a year, and my constantly nagging fear is that something could happen to her. I wouldn’t be able to get there until the emergency was over, and I just pray that she would be able to handle it on her own. She had a little practice with that last summer when she was in a minor (thank god) traffic accident, went to the hospital in ambulance, had x-rays and called us when it was all over with, and she was on her way home in another car the next day, on crutches. She handled it. Of course, my hair is a lot grayer now. :)</p>
<p>When DD was a freshman at her college 10 hours from home, she had to have a kidney stone removed. The doctor called and explained the options and said by the time you get here it will be over. DD friends and RA got her to the hospital, stayed with her and brought her back to her dorm. They called and kept us updated and sent pictures. Her college does have an infirmary and they were very helpful. They offered for DD to stay there the first night after the procedure along with two friends. </p>
<p>It actually ended up building her confidence. DD felt if she could handle that situation, she could handle a bad prof or anything that came her way.</p>
<p>Very great that your D took matters into her own hands in such a timely fashion. As much as I really love to jump in and help and still be needed it really is way more reassuring when they handle things themselves. Your D even has a great network for recovery - you must be very proud of her.</p>
<p>It didn’t get to surgery but my D had a similar situation this last semester in China. She took care of everything, used her resources to the best of her ability despite being very sick. She was exposed to unsterilized needles and the worst was waiting for the all clear on her blood tests once back in the states. She got the all clear - yay! I’m just starting to breath again.* She was diagnosed there as having acute blood inflammation. Our doctor at home said maybe severe pneumonia? Anyway the inflammation was so bad she has damage to her retinas (though temporary, phew). </p>
<p>Sorry to go on about our story but it just reminds me of how good it is that they can take care of things themselves because sometimes we can’t rescue them! My wishes for her speedy recovery!!!</p>
<p>*held breath for 2 months (and more gray hair^ too!)</p>
<p>I know I’m a little late to the party but wanted to add my 2 cents … D had her appendix out just as spring finals were starting her sophomore year. It was a late night surgery, and she’d had the presence of mind to authorize the doc to call us after it was over. All was well, but H still flew down the next morning, arriving in time to get her out of the hospital and back to her dorm. Since it was the end of the semester, she was facing not only finals, but also moving most of her stuff to off-campus storage. H did all the packing, lifting, moving, etc. while D got her finals rescheduled.</p>
<p>OK franglish, boomer22, and SimpleRules, you’ve convinced me to change my mind about my earlier reply. It would be better for my D to know that she could handle something like this without my help, and better for me to know it too. D will abroad later this year and getting to her in an emergency will be a practical impossibility, so thank you for making me think about this now. </p>
<p>Amended reply: I wouldn’t fly out unless something was going badly awry and needed my personal on-site presence to deal with – but it would be REALLY hard!</p>
<p>Collage1, Happy to hear that your daughter is feeling good. It is’nt easy when they are away from home and sick. Hope you are able to breath a little easier now and your daughter is back to her old self very quickly.</p>
<p>Just read this thread. So glad that your daughter is now out of the hospital and has some wonderul friends to take care of her. Best wishes to her.</p>
<p>So glad that your daughter is on the mend. My D is also in a great downtown area in Boston near colleges, and she did have to go to the ER this year, her first year in an apt. If you’re going to fall ill in college, Boston is the place to be with all the great medical services and hospitals. My D really didn’t want me to come down but she was glad to know that I would have in an instant. Her college friends rallied and took care and checked in on her and I got updates by text or Skype. It was good for both of us to let her handle it on her own because 1) she wanted to, and 2) I needed to know that she could so I could continue to let her be self sufficient.</p>
<p>OP, I’m glad to hear that the surgery went well and that her sorority sisters are looking after her.</p>
<p>Collage1, I’m so happy that your daughter is doing so well. Like most of the other parents here, something like this happening has always been one of my greatest worries, and my instinct in similar circumstances would be to fly wherever I had to – even when my son was studying abroad in Vienna – to take care of him and help him recuperate, unless (like you) I was sure everything was OK and my son made clear he didn’t need me.</p>
<p>Perhaps I feel that way even more because I had pretty much the opposite situation when I was 22 and in the fall of my third year of law school. I was seriously – and, for a while, critically – ill and in the hospital in Cambridge, MA with what was eventually diagnosed as my first encounter with Crohn’s Disease. I’m sure my mother would have come up from NYC to take care of me the moment she heard, but she had died just two years earlier. I called my father when I was admitted to the hospital to tell him what was going on, and although I didn’t specifically ask him to come up, I certainly would have appreciated a visit at some point. Not only didn’t he come visit me (and it was rather embarrassing to have to keep making excuses for his absence every time a nurse asked me why my parents weren’t there); he didn’t call me one single time during my entire stay in the hospital to find out how I was. And I was way too ill to call him. He’s never been a demonstratively affectionate father, but this was ridiculous. Afterwards, when I asked him why he hadn’t called, he said something like “I thought that you would let me know how you were, and assumed when I didn’t hear from you that you must be better.” A way of parental thinking entirely foreign to my own, I must say! And I admit that there’s part of me that still hasn’t forgiven him for this, all these years later.</p>
<p>I’m happy to say that my son takes after me infinitely more than I take after my father in this respect. If he calls me and can’t reach me, he always keeps calling until I answer, because, as he’s told me, he worries so much about my health. (Especially after what happened two years ago, as some of you may remember.) I think he’s very sweet and a wonderful son.</p>