Students seeking specialty care face limited, expensive options and long commutes – all while trying to go to school.
By Julia Berkman
When you have a chronic illness, life doesn’t slow down. Time passes at the same rate as it ever has, and soon enough you’re old enough to go to college- and you’re still sick. For students with disabilities living in Bellingham, you might have to choose between your education and adequate care. Now, especially with ACA potentially being repealed and replaced, finding a good doctor in your network is hard.
There are many on-campus options available for the average ailing student – cold or flu, you can hit the health center for some dayquil and a lollipop. When you factor in mental illness, your chances of a drive-thru cure decrease.
A former student employee at the Disability Resource Center said they had noticed a difficulty in referring new students, but couldn’t provide more details due to confidentiality concerns.
Junior Sophia Cunningham was given low chances of finding a specialist when she moved to Bellingham and began seeking EMDR treatment. EMDR is a therapy similar to exposure therapy, used to help people overcome things that trigger them. It’s experimental, so it’s hard to find a doctor that runs the program in smaller towns. To find one within your network is an even bigger struggle.
“I sought help at the school counseling center early in the year, only for them to tell me they didn’t have the resources to help me with my issues, so they just prescribed me an SSRI [antidepressant] that worsened my negative symptoms,” Cunningham said.
Western’s counseling center reserves the right to defer any student with needs they feel they can’t meet. However, some of these needs seem quite basic. The counseling center often defers students who need weekly appointments, as well as students who require “open-ended, ongoing psychotherapy.” If you’ve ever been in therapy, you know that ongoing weekly meetings are the norm.
Unfortunately, the Counseling center is referring people to a scarce world of psychiatric care in Bellingham. Within your insurance network, there may only be one psychologist or psychiatrist who has the area of expertise you require. Part of good therapy is building rapport with your professional. If you don’t click, that’s it. If they don’t have any time available, that’s it. You’ve exhausted your options.
“The counseling center directed me to off campus resources, many of whom didn’t take my insurance. Of those who did take my insurance, none had space for me,” Cunningham said. “I eventually caved and am now seeing a specialist for EMDR who unfortunately doesn’t take my insurance, so I am paying out of pocket for the help I need.”
Many students can’t afford the luxury of paying out of pocket. Just one therapy session with a psychologist can cost upwards of $500 without insurance. For medical doctors, the price is even higher if they prescribe medication or take blood. You can leave a doctor’s office with bills in the thousands if they aren’t in your network.
Unfortunately, the counseling center functions a lot like the health center- if you’re feeling down in the dumps or anxious you can usually get the short-term help you need. Have a mental illness that’s difficult to treat? Better look elsewhere.
“My needs are met now, but only after a year of me actively seeking help off campus. On-campus help felt impersonal and only made me feel like a burden, and off-campus help was harder to find and expensive,” said Cunningham.
Lauren Lemieux, a Junior, is in a similar position.
“I’ve been looking for rheumatologists, but now recently I’ve been trying to find a specialist for my newly worsening vertigo and ear problems, and it’s been quite the task,” Lemieux said.
Her laundry list of conditions, including rheumatoid idiopathic arthritis and fibromyalgia, have left her with chronic pain and exhaustion.
It can be hard, with a disability, to even get up in the morning. But Lemieux makes the trek back down to Seattle to visit her doctors every week.
“Driving that far costs extra gas money and it’s hard to fit in doctor’s appointments an hour away when you have school,“ said Lemieux.
Unfortunately, this is the only hope she has of balancing her schoolwork and managing her chronic conditions.
An answer to managing chronic symptoms at Western is the Disability Resources for Students office located in Old Main room 120 . With a doctor’s note of diagnosis, the DRS sets you up with a counselor who can go through your accommodations with you.These accommodations may include excused absences, extra time on tests, late work, and so on. Employees at the DRS have also noticed the difficulty in referring new students, but perhaps even if you don’t have great quality of care, you can at least have a more equitable student experience, thanks to the DRS.
“I was super nervous to go [to the DRS] because getting accommodations when I went to Washington State University was really hard, and also because I always feel a bit ashamed to ask,” Lemieux said. “But it was so quick and easy. I feel super comfortable asking for what I need from both the people working there and my teachers now,”
Like Lauren, I started college with a long-term illness that impacted every aspect of my life. I took 30 pills a day, was on a very strict diet, and experienced a wide range of symptoms from fatigue to insomnia. I came far from home to start fresh and was expecting to start over with another doctor who specialized in my condition. In Bellingham, there are none. The closest specialist to me was in Seattle. With no car and no time, my treatment took a backseat to my education.
Thankfully, I’m now in remission. I’m lucky. For the thousands of students at Western with disabilities? They may not have a doctor in their corner to help them get there.