One of the biggest struggles I had when applying to college was knowing how to tailor my college experience to help with my disease. For many, college is the first time you’ll be away from home, and facing new experiences while garnering some backlash from your body can definitely be difficult. Below are some tips if you’re applying to college, or steps you can take to make things easier if you’re already there.
Look for schools with hospitals near by.
This one is especially important if you’re going to be more than a short car ride away from home. I can’t tell you how happy I was to be able to walk to the Emergency Room from my dorm, or to have my doctors just 10 minutes walking away. Even if you’re in remission, or if you haven’t had symptoms in a while, having a hospital near by is paramount. You’ll be thankful you have one if you’re unlucky enough to need one.
Make sure you have health insurance.
This one goes along with the first one. If you’re moving out of state, make sure you have health insurance coverage wherever you’re going. Also look into the health insurance your school offers, as it may be a great alternative.
Establish relationships with doctors over the summer.
Again, only necessary if you’re farther from home, but seeing a gastroenterologist over the summer is incredibly important if you’re moving to a new city. Some hospitals don’t offer short-term doctors appointments, so if you try to make a preliminary appointment once you get there, it may take you months to see a doctor. If you’re on any kind of medication, you’ll be thankful for a doctor close by to write you prescriptions. If you end up in the hospital, having a doctor you can call to manage your care while you’re there will keep you healthier and safer. It’s worth a trip to the city you’ll be moving to over the summer to make sure you’ll have the care you need when you arrive.
Check out the food situation.
When I was going to college, I was on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. I needed to make sure that my school’s dining halls and restaurants in the surrounding areas had food I could eat. Check to see if there’s a supermarket in your area! Even if you’re not on a specific diet, however, Crohn’s and Colitis can often react negatively to eating unhealthily. Make sure you scope out the dining halls and surrounding restaurants on your campus before you arrive. Make sure they offer options that aren’t limited to junk food, because even if you’re not on a diet now, treatments for these diseases can always change, and dietary restrictions may be deemed necessary.
Ask for accommodations.
This one is VERY important. Even if you’re symptom free, asking for accommodations at your school can be an absolute lifesaver. Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis are unpredictable, so it is VERY important to have accommodations even if you’re not experiencing symptoms. If you start feeling sick, you’ll greatly appreciate having them instead of having to go through the process of getting them while not feeling well. I only asked for accommodations after my first surgery, which was a huge mistake. Most universities (if not all) have a disability or accessibility office, and will require a note from your doctor that states exactly what accommodations you need before they give them to you. Do this over the summer! It can take weeks to get the accommodations you need. Some of the accomodations I got were the following:
– Transportation to and from class. This is a big one if you’re ever anemic or in pain. –
– Notification to your professors. Accessibility offices will tell your professors that they have a student with a disease. This will help professors understand if you need to miss class or be late. It’s good to go up to your professors during the first weeks to notify them of your condition anyways, though. –
– Food accommodations. I follow a very specific diet for my Crohn’s disease, and when I had my ileostomy, it was difficult to find food I could eat in the dining halls. Have your doctor put this on the sheet to make sure that the dining halls at your school offer accommodations if you ever need them. –
– Your own room. This one came more as a surprise than anything else (I didn’t ask my doctor for this one) but can prove incredibly helpful if your only other option is to live with a roommate. Although having a roommate is a good part of the college experience, being able to get a good amount of sleep a night is incredibly important for your health. It’s difficult to do this if your roommate wakes up earlier than you, or if they like to stay up studying with the lights on into the night. Having your own room means that you have a space where things are predictable, and especially where you can control your sleeping hours, when you have guests and your environment. This is also very important if you’re taking any forms of immunosuppressants. If you have a roommate who’s sick, you’re more likely to get sick as well. –
– Bathroom accomodations. Even if you don’t have symptoms now, they can creep up at any time, so having accommodations for a reasonable bathroom can be helpful. I shared my bathroom during my first year with three other people, which wasn’t bad at all. But when it came time for my second year and that wasn’t an option anymore, I discussed my accommodations with housing. I could either share a bathroom with 7 other people, or live across the hall from one in a hall style dorm. I opted for the latter option. Although I had a “private” bathroom in the first option, the second option meant that there were more stalls per person on the floor, and that even if all the stalls were taken, I could walk down to the other floors and use one of the bathrooms there, which I couldn’t do with the first option. –
Some other accomodations it may be wise to consider is the ability to have a car on campus (if your school doesn’t allow you to), accessibility parking (so that you can have your car close by to make sure you can get to doctor’s appointments), and placement in substance free housing (as this can help with the noisiness of regular dorm life.
My Intestines and Me 