First Aid

If only it was as simple as an apple a day. If putting off a visit to health services indefinitely was as simple as coughing up a dollar at the Student Center for one of their wormy, alleged “apples,” students would have a roll of dollar bills in hand with one lined up for every day of the semester. Because frankly, ’tis a far, far better thing to gag on a semi-fruit-like-apple than try to get an appointment to see someone – anyone – at health services.

The issue here is not with the nurses and doctors behind that omnipresent, drawbridge-like reception desk, who are angels with wings of cotton balls and sterile gauze, but with the minions who so closely guard them. Impenetrable as English oak and every bit as hard-headed, the receptionists dump all over “intruders” (er, students with medical issues) like hot oil. Their response to the idea that maybe one day it would be nice to talk to a doctor or even a nurse because your leg is bleeding pretty badly and you’re so sick you can’t really see straight pretty please?

Nothing.

Students have arrived at health services bleeding, barfing and bawling their eyes out. Not one of these incidents served to stir anything but a vague stupor from the receptionists who announce, in that infuriating monotone, that they “can’t make appointments” and that a nurse would be available “tomorrow at the earliest.” This, in the immortal words of Alicia Silverstone in Clueless, is “a travesty on the part of the [medical] profession!” Temple students demand justice! Temple students demand treatment! Temple students demand a throat culture when they’re pretty sure they have strep and want to know for sure so that they can get out of their classes for the next three days!

Temple students demand that the receptionists at health services start doing their jobs, making appointments and uttering those magic words: “The doctor will see you now.”