News
Students share personal Health Center experiences
By Kirsty Warren ’18
April 21, 2016
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As was reported in the Feb. 4 issue of The Spectator, Dr. Aimee Pearce left the College at the beginning of this semester. Since then, Dr. Toby Taylor of St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center has been providing Hamilton students with M.D. coverage on Thursday afternoons. February’s article noted that the College was seeking an additional M.D. provider for the Health Center. The vast majority of student concerns about the Health Center have to do with the center being understaffed. According to Jeff Landry, associate dean of students for health and safety, “We are still searching for additional staff and would like to hire a full time nurse practitioner. In addition, we would like to supplement our staff with an M.D., in addition to Dr. Taylor, who would provide care a day or two a week.”
“This semester has been difficult to meet student demand as I am the only full time provider in the Health Center,” Barbara Fluty said. “As a result, some students have had to be directed to local urgent care facilities in order for them to be evaluated in a timely fashion.” Hamilton seems to have a history of struggling to find the right balance of staff members for the Health Center.
Erin McCulloch ’16 said she has been to the Health Center many times during her four years at Hamilton, but one stretch of visits during the spring of her first year, another period when the Health Center was poorly staffed, stands out. “It started with a staph infection I got at a swim meet, and the Health Center was totally fine about that,” McCulloch said. “They sent me to the hospital, where I was treated with an antibiotic. But the antibiotic has a weird side effect that is very, very rare, so rare that they didn’t even bother to tell me about it.”
McCulloch recovered from the staph infection but then began feeling sick, so much so that she had a constant high fever, could not keep even fluids down, and once slept for as long as 72 hours straight. Her symptoms did not abate and she repeatedly went to the Health Center to get tested for strep throat and other infections.
“The walk to the Health Center was all I could do. I kept thinking if I could just make it from Dunham to the Health Center, then I would be okay,” she said. “Eventually, it was determined that I didn’t have anything they could test for. So they came to the conclusion that I had heartburn and put me on heartburn medication.”
McCulloch had been taking Advil and Tylenol to reduce her fever, but was told to only take Tylenol after being diagnosed with heartburn. After two weeks without getting better, McCulloch went home for Spring Break a week early.
“When I went to my doctor at home, my resting heartbeat was two times that of a maximum heartbeat while working out,” McCulloch said. “They tested blood samples and all of my major organs were failing. I was in liver failure, heart failure, colon failure. My white blood cell count was eleven times that of what it should have been. Most of my organs were in moderate failure, but my colon and liver were extreme. My doctor said that if I hadn’t come in that day, my colon might have burst that night. It was all the doses of Tylenol instead of Advil putting my liver into a super shocked failure state.”
After McCulloch’s visit, her home physician called McCulloch’s mother to tell her that either the staph infection had never gone away and McCulloch would need to be hospitalized for months, she had stage IV cancer and was about to die, or she had suffered an adverse reaction to the antibiotics (C. difficile infection). The third scenario was the best and most treatable, McCulloch’s doctor said, but she was by far the most severe case they had ever seen.
McCulloch emphasized that she has had positive experiences with the Health Center in her time at Hamilton and her situation was a very complicated one. “I don’t want to make it sound like the Health Center is incompetent. They were really trying their best. So many doctors wouldn’t know what to say to my symptoms, it was so rare,” she said. At the time, McCulloch said, the Health Center was staffed with a physician’s assistant but not a medical doctor.
Another senior, who asked to be quoted anonymously because she uses the Health Center frequently, had a negative experience with the Health Center when she sought a prescription for a contraceptive other than the Pill.
“It was my freshman year and I wanted to get a form of birth control like an IUD or a shot, something that wouldn’t control my day,” the senior said. “They said ‘no, I don’t believe in prescribing anything that would stop your period.’ I didn’t say anything at the time, because I want to be a physician’s assistant myself and I respected their opinion.”
Last semester, the senior returned to Hamilton after a year abroad and was treated in Utica after sustaining a concussion.
“The doctor asked me why I am on birth control pills if I have chronic migraines and recommended I switch to another form of contraceptive,” the senior said. “I went back to the Health Center and this time I saw Dr. Aimee Pearce [who did not work at Hamilton during the senior’s freshman year.] I explained that I want to control my period and not have my birth control control my day. I wanted to get an IUD and this time there was no problem. Dr. Pearce just recommended I go to an outside practice.”
In regard to Health Center birth control policies, Fluty said, “The Health Center manages straightforward oral contraceptive prescriptions the same as a primary care provider would. Anything outside of this requires intervention from a gynecologist.”
“It took until my senior year to get the kind of birth control I wanted for my body,” the senior said. “As someone who wants to go into the health care industry, it really got to me to have a health care provider tell me what to do with my body. It’s not your place to be able to put your beliefs on people.”
Natalie Adams ’17 spent the fall semester of this year as a student in the Hamilton Washington D.C. program, but was on campus at the very beginning of the year after leading an XA orientation trip.
“After the trip, I had what I thought were really bad bug bites so I made an appointment at the Health Center,” Adams said. “When [the nurse practitioner] asked for my class year, I said I was a junior and was actually doing the D.C. program this semester. She immediately changed her tone and said, ‘We can’t see you if you’re not a registered student this semester.’ She also said, ‘But that looks really bad you should get it looked at’ and gave me the address to Urgent Care in Utica, so I drove myself there. It turned out to be a fungal infection called ringworm and the treatment wasn’t covered by my insurance so I had to pay out of pocket.”
“It felt wrong to me because I was a Hamilton student, in a Hamilton program and I’d just given two weeks of my summer to lead a Hamilton orientation trip,” Adams said.
“Once a student is abroad, the College database will list them as being on an ‘Academic Leave of Absence.’ As such, they would not be receiving services such as housing, a meal plan, health care, etc. For health care, the expectation would be that they seek services from wherever they may be located,” Fluty explained in an email.
Many of the students interviewed for this article said they appreciate the Health Center’s hard work and know they are doing their best, but are nonetheless frustrated by the lack of availability of health care on the Hill. As McCulloch put it, “I think the thing about the Health Center is the lack of hours. Everyone during the flu period is trying to get an appointment at the same time. And their hours are while people are in class, so it’s just impossible if you’re a student who is sick but also doesn’t want to miss class. I think they need to hire more staff.”