(The Beacon)
By Jessie Hethcoat, Guest Commentary -- The Beacon
I love the Health Center.
I love Cathie Gurgel, Tim Crump, Tami Magnett, the counseling staff and everyone else I've encountered in my three years at UP in the Health Center. I would like to sing their names from mountaintops, and I will praise them for as long as people will listen.
Our Health Center is a luxury. We pay nothing for our visits and many prescription medications are available in the office. It's something I've come not to expect, but rely on.
Like many students, I work 20-hour weeks and take a full load of classes, I also maintain a very fine GPA (if I do say so myself). Free time, especially mid-week, is in short supply. So is money.
Our Health Center is one of the reasons I feel comfortable filling up my week's schedule. For the most part, I feel like I'm covered at UP. I feel like I can take that extra course or join that extra club because if I just work hard, my school will help me take care of the rest. I love that about our campus.
Last week, I called into the Health Center and found that they were booked for from that Wednesday morning until Tuesday. With a cough that sounded like I'd been hit by the bubonic plague, I took the referral to an off-campus clinic. I ended up at ZoomCare, our local doc-in-a-box, to be seen for my lungs that, with a deep breath, sounded like a fourth grade music class's rendition of "Freres Jacques."
This trip to ZoomCare added two hours to my day. Luckily for me, I have a car, and I was able to get to the Hawthorne location (the North Portland one, of course, was booked). Note that for a student without car, this would have taken over twice as long. Not only did it take away some mid-day time that I didn't have to spare, but the visit also ended up costing me $114 before paying for prescriptions.
These types of services are meant for people who are either out of town, without health insurance or for whatever reason without a primary care provider. For UP students, the Health Center is our primary health care facility. We shouldn't have to go see the folks at ZoomCare because our health care should be there when we need it.
It's time and money that I don't have to spend. And my cough sounded like that of a woman who had been smoking for 40 years.
I'm sure there are plenty of others who may have had to take even further measures in order to get antibiotics or some other form of necessary medication.
I've been saying this all year: The Health Center is understaffed. It's time to face the facts and give them some more funding. I'm wondering whether this is one of the problems arising as result of our swelling campus.
So please, let's RISE and hire another excellent nurse practitioner, or at least find a way to prevent this problem from happening. For me personally, it is not the first time.
For my lungs. I beg of you.
Jessie Hethcoat is a junior English major. She can be contacted at hethcoat12@up.edu.
(Samantha Heathcote -- The Beacon)
