Lecture Failure!

Continued from Friday 26th September........

I realised that my son must have been hooked up to an ECG machine, which explained the stickers all over his chest and that the sticking plaster was covering the site where some of his blood had been taken. I felt quite bewildered and all I could manage to say was 'Why?'

Apparently, student son and his friends had been in a club, but had gone outside for a while, because 2 of them wanted a cigarette. They were not allowed to take their drinks with them, and had to leave them on one of the tables inside the club. When they returned, my son picked up his drink, finished it and collapsed. One of his friends called an ambulance and accompanied him to the hospital, whilst his other friends followed in a taxi.

Student son came round, as he was being put into the ambulance by the paramedics. One of them asked for the telephone number of anyone he wanted notified of his hospital admission, but student son was able to think clearly enough to decide that he didn't want his parents at the hospital, so he gave them his own mobile number. (This explained why we had not been contacted, then!) The hospital monitored him throughout the night and discharged him the following morning, when they were satisfied that he was alright.

After I'd recovered a little from the impact of these revelations, we discussed the possible reasons for student son's collapse. He and his friends felt that his drink had been spiked. I couldn't help but wonder whether he had simply drunk more than his body could cope with, as he is very slim and probably of less than average height. The hospital was unable to offer any explanation for student son's collapse.

My husband and I gave my son a(nother) lecture about the dangers of alcohol abuse, and leaving his drink unattended, before he returned to university that evening. My son doesn't often have the opportunity to go out, because he is kept busy with lectures and placements, but I suspect that on a lot of the occasions he goes drinking, he has too much. Most of the places catering for students offer cheap alcohol. The club my son and his friends had been in, on the fateful evening, was 'students only' and had been selling beer for a £1 per pint. I knew that my student son was intending to go to a party the following Friday evening, so I reminded him a couple of times, over the telephone, during the next week, that he needed to cut down his alcohol intake at the party.

My husband and I were late going to bed, on the night of the party and were watching the end of a film on tv, at 12.30am, when my middle son came into the room, saying that he had just had a conversation with student son, on his mobile 'phone. Middle son had kept student son talking, as he walked home from the pub', where the party had been held. He had realised that student son was a bit 'the worse for wear', so he felt that he should keep him talking until he was safely inside his student house. After a few minutes of talking, middle son remarked that it was taking student son a long time to get back to the house. 'Yes, I know' said student son. 'It's taking ages.'

'Why is it taking so long?' asked middle son, who needed to go to sleep, as he was working the next day.

'Cos I can't walk in a straight line!' said student son.

I smiled weakly, through my despair. That was another lecture that had fallen on deaf ears, then.