 | Erin Marsh Marsh Madness |
January sparkles. It glistens and gleams and treats happy, relaxed students with balmy breezes and stunning sunsets. Palms sway gently as crisply uniformed waiters serve up mai tais at poolside. January is glorious.
In Barbados.
The winter months in Ann Arbor are a slightly different story. January here glistens, all right; ice does that. We get a different kind of breeze - more the blistering cold, "oh my God my ears have fallen off" variety. Crisply uniformed waiters? Mai tais? Does the delivery guy from Pizza House count?
Along with the privilege of shelling out mucho buckage to live in Ann Arbor, residents and students get to pay another kind of winter due: tissues, cough syrup, lozenges, medical bills, tea, whiskey and aspirin. Winter illnesses are striking, friends. Brace yourselves.
Mom always yelled at you to wash your hands, take your vitamins and drink lots of OJ. Haven't listened? Tsk, tsk. Having to take care of your sorry, sick self alone can be a little depressing. Luckily, there are lots of ways to remedy the pain and make it to Spring Break alive.
No. 1. Call your mom. (Or grandma or aunt or sister or whoever is the official sympathy dispenser in your family.) Sniffle a little bit. Nothing will earn you warm, loving words like croaking, "Bubby, I'b sick. By head hurts and by throat hurts and I'b coughing a lot. Bubby, I biss you." Of course, this move may be unnecessarily cruel. After all, if mommy is several hundred miles away, she can't do a thing but sit around and worry about you. When fishing for sympathy, exercise caution.
No. 2. Go drug shopping. No, I'm not suggesting you find yourself a nice little crack house. Instead, head for the cold/flu medicine aisle at Meijer. Aaaaaaw yeah - DayQuil, NyQuil, Robitussin, Sudafed, Dristan, Benadryl, Sinutab, Advil, Aleve, Tylenol, Halls and Bayer: your pharmaceutical friends. As Pink Floyd suggests, it really is best to stay comfortably numb. You stand there staring at the shelves, the boxes and names swimming before your delirious eyes like schools of (healthy) tropical fish. You may be conscious enough to worry that you are offending the rest of the customers with your disheveled appearance. Uh, look around you in the aisle - you'll find yourself in the midst of quite a motley collection of diseased shoppers, all looking like pathetic shadows of their former selves. You're among friends. Direct your attention back to the boxes and bottles and try to find one product that will cure what ails you. Let's see; that one relieves cough with congestion, this one is nondrowsy, that one alleviates body aches and a stuffy nose but won't do anything for your sore throat - forget it. You will not find one product to fix you. Best to use this approach: Lift arm directly in front of you. Bend at the elbow. Cup hand into scoop-like device. Now, sweep arm along shelf, knocking at least one of each product into basket.
No. 3. Pay UHS a visit. (Warning: Only resort to University Health Service when desperate. Take out a life insurance policy before your visit.) UHS is a valuable resource for University students. It offers quality care, a pharmacy, many specialists and lab services. I'm assuming that's what they tell you, anyway.
UHS is, at best, a gargantuan pain in the ass, and at worst, almost kills people. In all fairness, I've never had a near-death experience there, but several people I know have, including one case where the patient went in for routine prescription medication and spent the next 48 hours vomiting. He now cringes in fear and repulsion whenever UHS is mentioned; upon entering the building (to accompany a friend foolish enough to seek treatment there) he calmly remarked, "This place smells like death."
If you've decided to take your chances anyway, actually physically getting into a physician's office could be a problem. UHS usually offers three- to four-hour waits for walk-in appointments, which means you get to pitch a tent in a crammed waiting room with scores of other hacking, sneezing, sniffling students (check your immune system at the door). Hint: Save yourself the agony of the wait and call ahead to schedule an appointment.
In Ann Arbor, sick college students are about as common as coursepacks. It may be Mother University's way of telling you to chill out for a few days. Be nice to yourself: Skip some class, drink some cocoa, watch some junk TV. Gear yourself up for the abuse your poor body will have to take once you're back in the swing of things.
- Erin Marsh can be reached over e-mail at eemarsh@umich.edu