Dorm Disease.

Yesterday I awoke to find my left eye all crusted over and red as can be. Yes I realize that is really gross but I wanted to write a warning blog to any prospective students about just how easily illnesses can travel through the dorms and in this particular case it was pink eye. It is pretty cool living in the dorms, basically living in an apartment with all your friends, but if one of those friends gets sick, it can spread like wildfire.

My pink eye started Tuesday morning, so I immediately went to the doctor that afternoon. After a not to bad wait at the Steamboat Medical Clinic, I got right in to the doctor who described my red left eye as impressive. Not the word I probably would have gone with but I thanked him nonetheless. He then prescribed me eye drops and even got me a free refill if I needed or my roommate or someone got it and needed drops too, which I thought was really cool.

From there I went to Safeway and while waiting for my prescription to be filled, loaded up on some other cold fighting devices. On top of my pink eye, I've had a sore throat for a few days and a congested nose for weeks, but while at Safeway, I discovered a miracle worker. Cold-Eeze is a brand of lozenges that markets itself as being "Clinically proven to reduce the duration of the common cold" and this is absolutely true. After suckin on just one in the morning, my sore throat is gone for the whole day, and my nose dries right up. It has yet to completely eliminate my stuffy nose, but I can already tell it is helping.

In addition to Cold-Eeze, I stocked up sickness fighting medicine and materials. I bought an economy size jug of hand sanitizer so I'll actually be able to touch things without completely infecting them. I had already bought some sore throat spray and Nyquil, even though the spray didn't really do a thing for me. I bought some anti-viral kleenexes, which I didn't even know existed, and I even bought some calcium enriched pop-tarts, just to try and make them healthier.

Now I'm not actually sure when this strain of pink eye first started creeping around the dorms but I do know that I happen to be one of the later ones to get it. The reason illnesses spread so easily around the dorms, besides the fact that it is a bunch of people living in close quarters together, is the ventilation system. In a building like this, all the vents are connected, so when one person gets sick, it can spread to the rest of the building through the vents. Now I'm not trying to hate on the dorms, but I'm just warning you so you can make precautions.

I have yet to figure out a way to close the vents, although I'm pretty sure you can't, but what my roommate and I have been doing lately, especially since it has been crazy warm here, is leaving the window open to try and air out the room. Also, even though you can't close the vent, you could turn it way down so as to have it blow less air.

A huge bummer about getting really sick like this is that I've already missed so much class from going to tradeshows that now I have to force myself to class even with an infectious illness. On top of that, I just found out that my roommates girlfriend is coming to visit this weekend, so I'm going to try to sleep in another friends room so I don't infect my roommate right before his girlfriend visits. And even on top of that, I haven't been snowboarding in four days which is probably the worst part. So take a lesson from me and get your germ fighting materials early so you don't wind up in a situation like this. Peace.