Parent to parent: Some tips for flu season

By Jeff Hudson

For me, the arrival of flu season always brings back memories. Let me share a cautionary tale involving college life, wet January weather and an ordinarily mild ailment. You and your student might benefit from hearing it.

Back in the 1970s, as an undergrad at UC Santa Barbara, I shared an apartment with a surfer. He was a good-natured sort, but he lived in total denial of winter. When the weather turned cold, he continued to pad around the apartment barefoot wearing shorts and a t-shirt. He just cranked up the heat — 75 was the minimum.

A wall-mounted heater did more than send our utility bill through the roof. It completely dried out the indoor air. I started suffering from nosebleeds as a result. When I later developed a cough and a fever, I spent a few days recovering at home. Breathing the bone-dry air inside the apartment made the nosebleeds worse, and my cough and fever lingered. Eventually my repeated coughing triggered a nosebleed that went on for an hour and a half. I ended up at the campus health center and had the inside of my nose cauterized.

The doctor recommended I buy a humidifier. But I was nearly broke, so he suggested I boil water on the stove, or linger in the shower, and breathe the steam. The doctor also sent me home with two bottles of codeine-enhanced cough syrup. Eventually, I bought a humidifier, and to this day I keep one around my house and bring it out of storage each November.

My son gets sick

All these memories came roaring back during January 2010, when my son Stephen was living in an apartment in South Davis. Two of Stephen’s roommates were from Southern California, and Stephen was quite amused at their extreme reactions to the local winter weather. “It’s like they don’t know what to do when the temperature goes below 45,” Stephen told me. Soon, the utility bill at Stephen’s apartment had swelled to well over $200 a month.

In January, Stephen ran a fever, had a terrible cough and he missed his classes for several days in a row. I asked him on the phone if he had food in his fridge, and he admitted, “Uh, not very much.”

Some TLC

I went into action at that point, because I knew that the UC quarter system is not very forgiving. I made up a big pot of chicken soup, I bought a box of tasty Mandarin oranges, and I also provided a batch of Japanese-style Koshihikari rice and ocha-zuke seasoning (a favorite of Stephen’s from the year we lived in snowy Nagano, Japan). I also instructed Stephen to spend time breathing through a damp washcloth every day to keep his nasal membranes from drying out. This did the trick.

You might want to think about what sort of foods might serve to perk up your son or daughter should he or she come down with wintertime chest crud and a stuffed-up head during the rainy month of January. When students who live in residence halls are ill, a friend can request a “get well tray” form from the resident advisor and use it to go to the dining hall and bring back a meal.

Convincing your student to get a flu shot is also a good idea. Student Health Services recommends that students be vaccinated for the seasonal flu and offers the service by appointment. Its special webpage about the flu offers signs and symptoms, prevention, treatment and how student health center can help.