"Health center provides emergency care" -- Dec. 29, 2006

By Caleb Breakey
Urbana Today

Brenda Lewis wasn’t ready for work. She had barely gotten out of bed. The telephone was ringing, and after she picked it up on Wednesday morning, she couldn’t put it down. It buzzed every two or three minutes with injury and health questions — a broken elbow, two sprained ankles, a jammed finger, flu symptoms, eye problems and a severe sore throat.

Lewis, 46, works as an ER nurse in Madison, Wis., and is the director of the Health and Wellness Center at Urbana 06. The Center — staffed by three volunteer physicians, a physician assistant, nurses and drivers — is located on the second floor in the Renaissance St. Louis Suites next to the America’s Center off of Washington Avenue.

Eye infections and the flu mark the most common cases that the center has treated so far, Lewis said. As of noon Thursday, the Center’s staff had treated 41 patients since the beginning of Urbana 06.

The Center’s doctors can write prescriptions, which are subsequently picked up at a pharmacy in St. Louis and brought back to the Center within two to three hours, Lewis said. The center also uses a medical van to take people to the ER if needed, such as when an Urbana 06 delegate broke his elbow this week.

“We’re kind of an extension of mom and dad,” Lewis said. “If you were at home, somebody close would take you to the ER.”

Suzie Jung slouched in a green chair at the center on Thursday, resting her head against one of its hefty, padded armrests. Jung, 24, had brought her roommate, Uc Le, to the center because Le woke up feeling ill.

The two met on Wednesday and are staying at Hyatt Regency with three other roommates. Their group didn’t switch the lights off in their room until 2:30 a.m. because they were planning which sessions they would attend today, Jung said.

They woke up at 7:30 a.m., and Le felt too groggy and nasally to walk to the breakfast room. Their room is often open to a connected room of Urbana 06 delegates, of which two have become sick, Jung said.

“Eventually, I feel it will spread,” she said. “Our whole floor might get sick.”

Even so, illnesses aren’t just sprouting from local viruses, said volunteer physician Richard Schamp.

“It’s not that things are going around, it’s that people brought it with them,” he said.

The flu, which lasts between 48 and 72 hours, can spread fast, Lewis said. The pharmacy that the center originally contracted with received more than 200 prescription orders within two hours on Wednesday, and relayed to the Center that prescriptions would be pushed back up to 24 hours, Lewis said. The Center contracted with another pharmacy soon thereafter.

Le, who left the Center with medicine, said she doesn’t plan to sit out any events at Urbana 06.

“That’s why I went to the doctor today,” she said. “I want to go to all the sessions.”

Hand sanitizers and handwashing are the most effective germ-attackers, Lewis said. She suggested that Urbana delicates wash their hands eight times per day. One of the reasons people get sick is from pushing themselves too much, Lewis said, depriving themselves of food, liquids, and sleep.

“If you try to drink from a big hose that’s pouring out fast, it can hurt you,” she said. “If you try to take everything in every moment of the day, and not get your sleep, and not hydrate yourself, that will harm you physically and could go into the spiritual, emotional and everything like that.”