Friday night, my roommate, Tom, underwent surgery to repair a torn ACL. Shortly after I picked him up that night, I visited a nearby CVS/Pharmacy to fill his Percocet prescription. I walked in with his out-of-state driver's license, insurance card and prescription. Without asking to see my ID or even to call Tom and confirm that, you know, he was okay with this random guy obtaining his medicine, the pharmacy quickly and politely gave me the 80 tablets of (someone else's) narcotics and sent me on my way.
In contrast to the simplicity of this transaction, our efforts to obtain a scooter for Tom have been fruitless and frustrating. Health services advised us to call NDSP, who told us to call health services. Awesome. Upon calling health services a second time, we were informed that a doctor needs to authorize Tom's need for a scooter before NDSP will provide it. No problem, surely the stack of discharge papers signed by Tom's doctor, papers which detail the nature of his surgery and which note that he requires crutches and will be unable to walk for weeks, should suffice, right?
Unfortunately, no. Likewise, the fact that Tom's entire left leg is wrapped in gauze and that he's walking on crutches is apparently not enough justification to obtain a scooter. The authorization can only come from Tom's doctor or a Health Services doctor, and neither is available on the weekend. Thus, Tom has spent the entire weekend and all of today relying either on his crutches or on rides from NDSP to get around, waiting until he get can the necessary documentation signed and delivered in order to receive a scooter. While the free rides offer is refreshingly helpful (and we thank the kind NDSP receptionist who alerted us to that offer), it's clearly more trouble than him simply having a scooter of his own, and it, of course, means that there's one less NDSP officer available.
So, the inescapable conclusion: It's easier to obtain someone else's Schedule II Controlled Substance than a scooter from Notre Dame. We can all sleep peacefully knowing that the University is doing its part to curb the rampant abuse of prescription scooters plaguing our campus.
Jim Masters
junior
Fisher Hall
Feb. 2
