It was bound to happen sooner or later. It was only a matter of time, before I, like so many other freshmen before me, got sick. When you live in a dorm, share communal smoking paraphernalia, stay up until four in the morning on weeknights, and eat ice cream for breakfast, you’re going to get sick. Period.

It was a Thursday night like any other. I was at my desk, doing my French homework. Then I felt it–a slight tickle in my chest. I ignored it, and went out drinking anyway. But by the next morning, instead of my usual slight hangover, I was sick. I had developed the cough one expects from cancer patients on their deathbeds. By Sunday, my roommate had abandoned our room to take up temporary residence in the lounge. My sponsor group had started making the sign against evil at my approach. One of my more sympathetic neighbors tried treating me with echinacea tea; I’m not sure if it worked or not, but the effort was appreciated.

Hoping for some maternal comfort, I called home the next day.

"Ma, I’m sick," I said between coughs.

"That’s nice dear. Why aren’t you in class?" she replied.

"You don’t get it mom, I’m sick. I’m coughing and weezing and I feel like hell." I asked her to send me some of her home-made chicken soup. She said that wouldn’t be a good idea. Then I asked if she could send me some money so I could buy my own here.

"Nice try," she said.

Well aware that the phone company was sucking me dry at a rate of 16 cents a minute, I hung up the phone, and passed out on my bed.

The next morning I managed to sleep through my 11 a.m. class. Figuring the time had finally come, I left my room–which my roommate had started calling "the hot zone"–for the first time in 24 hours, and headed down to Baxter. The fact that I had started hacking up what appeared to be minute parts of my lungs had some role in this decision.

On my way, I recalled fond memories of my high school experiences with the nurse’s office. Mrs. Roman, the school nurse, would dispense little lemon-flavored candies disguised as cough drops, and let me sleep on a cot until math class was over. If that was the standard treatment in a public high school, what then would await me at this mecca of learning that my parents are so happily paying over 30,000 dollars a year for?

Fantasies of kind, soft-spoken nurses bearing blankets and tea danced through my head. A doctor would diagnose me with some obscure (but easily curable) disease, and fill out a prescription for some wonder drug that would cure me in less than a day.

I climbed the steps to Baxter, and entered the oasis of modern medicine. Everything inside seemed perfectly legitimate; there were a few students in the waiting room, flipping through old issues of Good Housekeeping and National Geographic. I stumbled towards the desk, where a woman clad in a nurse’s uniform was filling out paperwork. Through parched and cracked lips, I gasped out my need for immediate medical treatment.

"That’ll be ten dollars for a walk-in appointment," she said without glancing up.

Ten dollars!? I can barely afford to pay last month’s phone bill, and these quacks expect me t o shell out ten dollars for dubious medical advice?? Muttering obscenities against the "health care professionals" at Baxter, and the medical establishment at large, I staggered out the door.

On the way back, I stopped at the Coop store, looking for anything, anything at all, that would make me feel better. And I have to say, I for one will be forever grateful for the fact that there are Hall’s cough drops at the Coop. I bought an entire box, and threw in some orange juice for good measure. Now, I have no idea if vitamin C really does do anything for a cold, but I can eat those cough drops like popcorn. And Nyquil–that stuff is like crack for sick people. At about 25% alcohol, who needs to buy hard liquor? It comes in a variety of flavors, from cherry to orange, there’s no hangover, and best of all, you don’t need a fake ID.

This cocktail of cough drops and Nyquil kept me in woozy comfort for several days, until my immune system finally woke up and decided to do its job. Now that I am almost completely recovered, I can definitely say that being sick at college is no fun. It’s one of those things they don’t tell you about in the brochures, like running out of clean underwear, or those mysterious vegan sausages at brunch. But if my mom were here right now, I’m sure she’d say that I’m a stronger person for it. Or something like that..