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Mark Maynard, a Ypsilanti business development adviser, came away from the University of Michigan Hospital on Sunday with a reassuring diagnosis and a far more dramatic tale.
After an overnight stay, he left with a prescription and advice to drop pounds, avoid caffeine and just say no to spicy food. "I have very bad acid reflux," he explains near the end of a blog post headlined "My day in the Ann Arbor drunk tank . . . with chest pains."
Mark Maynard: "I don’t want to scare my daughter, but I’d like for her to know that actions have consequences, and that often the guys at the frat party may not have your best interests in mind."
Being hospitalized on a University of Michigan football Saturday gave Maynard a bedside view of binge drinking's toll.
The blogger acknowledges "walking a line" by describing what he saw and heard, even without names or other identifying details. "I struggled with whether or not to post this," he writes, "even though I didn’t share any specifics about the patients."
He describes a flow of passed-out or incoherent students carried in for care -- an influx that arrives before, during and after each home game. "An open, honest discussion on binge drinking is a good thing," Maynard believes.
Here's part of what the 1993 UM graduate saw:
If you ever find yourself tempted to think that binge drinking isn’t a significant issue in Ann Arbor, I’d encourage you to spend a football Saturday in the University of Michigan ER.
Saturday’s football game, the last home game of the season, was scheduled to begin at 4:30, and, by 2 p.m. the students were already beginning to make their way in, escorted by EMTs. . . . I did pick up on several distinct conversations, most all of which began with students being asked, “Do you know where you are?” (They rarely did.)
For the purposes of this post, I’d like to just share one example -- a young woman who came in nearly comatose, having been found covered in vomit in an Ann Arbor alley. Of all the folks I’d hear that day, it was her that I was most worried about.
I could see her come in. The EMTs brought her down the corridor, strapped to a board, telling the hospital staff where she’d been found. Her head was hanging to one side, like her neck couldn’t support the weight of it. . . . When she first came in, before I realized that her admission was alcohol related, I thought that she had an advanced neuromuscular disease of some kind. As the conversation between nurses continued, though, I put the pieces together. Within a few minutes of arriving, and being told that she was at a hospital, she began vomiting.
“Is that Jell-O shots or daiquiris?” I heard one nurse ask. . . .
People would come into my room to poke and prod at me, and we’d invariably start talking about what it’s like to work at the hospital on a football Saturday.
Someone told me that it’s always this way. Someone else said that it’s gotten worse since we started having night games. Yet someone else told me that another student was found passed out, nearly nude, “by the railroad tracks” before the game had even started. . . .
By the way, they apparently refer to this section of that emergency room that I was in, at least unofficially, as the “drunk tank.” I heard the term used at least twice.
Unconscious or incoherent students were carried into the UM Hospital, which staffers see every football Saturday. (File photo)
In addition to turning detailed notes into a vivid post, Maynard adds a call to action:
It might make sense, at the very least, to embed a reporter or two [at the hosipital] on football Saturdays in order to share the stories (without names) of those who wind up here.
Maybe it wouldn’t help all that much, as people at that age are probably just going to do what they’re going to do, but I don’t see as how it would hurt for young people to, if only for a second, put themselves in the shoes of a freshman, abandoned by her friends, and found collapsed in an alley. As kids are inundated with media glorifying binge drinking, shouldn’t there at least be a channel or two sharing the consequences of said behavior in an interesting, compelling, non-moralizing way?
For instance, what if the Michigan Daily embedded a reporter or two the night of the next Michigan home game and then attempted to interview people anonymously upon their release? I think that could be a pretty powerful series that might actually help a few students.
The writer is a marketing consultant and board member of the Ann Arbor Awesome Foundation, which gives $1,000 micro-grants for "extraordinarily awesome" local projects."
He's also a dad. During his hosptal time, he posts, "I spent a lot of time thinking about my own daughter, who, I hope, is still several years away from having to make choices about frat parties and alcohol."
I don’t want to scare my daughter, but I’d like for her to know that actions have consequences, and that often the guys at the frat party may not have your best interests in mind. Furthermore, I’d like for her to know that it’s important who you associate yourself with.
