“Yeah, those are premature crows feet,” I explained, “I’m getting wrinkly and old.” Then I proceeded to make crow noises on the front lawn for thirty seconds.
In some ways, I feel like I’m becoming a wrinkly old grown-up. I take vitamins every morning, (occasionally) read the newspaper, and can say things like, “The markets closed on a real high today,” and marginally understand what I’m talking about. In other ways, I feel just as young and clueless as the girl who came on campus three years ago—who wore her Hawk’s Nest shirt to the first football game with no understanding of Moco attire.
There are some lessons endemic to Lehigh culture: don’t change seats in class after the first week of the semester, you can’t take phone calls in the library, or you can always pretend someone doesn’t exist if you look down at your phone as they walk by. Then there are lessons beyond the realm of South Bethlehem: filing a W-4 tax form, remembering your social security number, or separating your darks and lights. One of the biggest lessons I learned right off the bat at Lehigh was; who takes care of me?
Freshman year, I could hear the coughing through the wall. It was winter, and the peak of flu season. Not a day went by where you didn’t hear the echoing of a puffy faced freshman in the bathroom blowing the shit out of their nose. We were getting hit left and right with disease, and none of us knew what to do. I’d see crusty-eyed first years stumble into Lower, and think to myself Why aren’t these people in the health center? Or quarantine? We were like the island of misfit toys, waiting for someone to swoop in and take care of us.
I overheard a girl whining to her roommate in the common room—“My fever is up around 100, and I literally can’t get a decent night’s sleep. My throat is so swollen I look like a frog.” Her roommate flashed a look of sympathy across her face, and went back to browsing the CollegeACB page, largely ignoring the plight of her (not-so) beloved roommate.
At the time, I thought to myself, what an epic bitch! of the girl. Now, not so much. That’s one of the first things you learn at college, who takes care of me? Being sick is one of those terrible experiences in college when you finally realize you really are on your own. No one is getting you soup, and no one is telling you not to go to school that day. You are your own gatekeeper, and I admit, that’s pretty scary. The same girl with the fever stood in the hallway the next morning, reasoning with whoever walked by on why she wasn’t going to class. I get it. You feel like someone else has to approve, but no one really cares if you are going to class or not—they’re more worried about an upcoming 4 o’clock or trying to remember what they did last night. It’s bizarre when you finally realize it’s all up to you, and that no one else cares when you skip your 8:10 Statistics class. In college, your health is very much up to you.
Full Disclosure: I’m a pretty serious asthmatic, and a habitually sick person. I’m like one of those ladies in a Victorian novel that spends about an hour in the rain, and then dies of pneumonia the very next day. I have pretty much been sick my entire duration at Lehigh, but I’ll never forget the first time I realized I actually have to take care of myself. The spring of freshman year I was in rough shape. I joined a sorority, which was awesome, but my self-imposed social schedule was leaving no time for health. I was young, with a youthful liver. I was on top of the world (or at least on top of a table stomping in a frat house), until my health took a turn for the worse.
I went home spring break with an inability to breathe properly. A quick visit to my doctor revealed my lung capacity was at around 50%, as if I had lost a lung somewhere in a pile of frackets. It took a bad case of pneumonia compounded with my asthma, and I seriously lost my breath. I took all the antibiotics my doctor asked me, and then promptly stopped when I was back and Lehigh and around the gin bucket.
Surprise, I got sick again. But this time, my mom wasn’t there to take me to the doctor. I bemoaned and sat in my bed, willing people to come take care of me. I needed tea, soup, and more importantly, someone to tell me that I needed to see a doctor. I honestly don’t understand how my roommate slept through the nights, when my coughing was reminiscent of a foghorn. When I couldn’t make my daily pilgrimage from UC to M&M, I realized I had a problem. I hauled ass to the Health Center, where my condition was so poor, the nurse practitioner looked at me like I was nuts for letting it go this far. “What were you thinking?” she asked with concern. I mumbled something about being really busy, but in reality I understood it was entirely my fault I was in such poor shape.
But, just as the girl who lived down the hall from me, I was paralyzed when it came to illness. All I had to do before college was cough a few times and my mom pulled out the thermometer and told me to take it easy. When I hacked up a lung during class discussion, no one was asking me if I wanted a cough drop. When I limped my way up from lunch to pass out in my bed, no one was there to coddle me.
Who takes care of me? (Hint: Look in the mirror).
I became very acquainted with antibiotics, and surprise, felt well. It sounds like an easy lesson after you learn it, but at the time I was truly at a loss. It’s startling when you finally realize that there is no one in your approximate vicinity that wants to wipe your nose or dote on you. Getting sick in college is like a gateway drug for independence.
Since taking myself to the doctor for the first time, I’ve made many other firsts. I booked an airline ticket, and figured out a bus schedule. I wrote my first check, and hid my first speeding ticket from my parents. I came home, and for the first time felt isolated by the salmon pink bedroom walls I had chosen in 8th grade. While the moments of independence define us, they also separate us from what we once were and bring us one step closer to who we will become.
I was on the phone with my mom last week when I suppressed a whopper of a cough. “That sounds bad,” she said, “have you gone to the health center?”
Instead of validation, I felt annoyance. “I can take care of it myself.”
I take care of me.
-Emma Diehl '13
Check out her blog HERE
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