In December, junior Fort Lewis College psychology major Elizabeth Thompson started experiencing horrific foot pain.

“I was missing a ligament, probably from an old sprain,” she said doctors told her. In the intervening weeks, she has navigated campus with the help of an orthopedic scooter to support her injured limb.

Thompson said, health-wise, the real challenge she’s facing as an undergraduate at FLC – where students walk, hike, bike and run to class and hand sanitizer greets you in the Student Union – isn’t her temporary lack of a fully operational foot.

It’s staying healthy at all.

“I need eight hours of sleep – I had to talk to my freshman roommates about that,” she said. “Now, I live by myself. So there are nobody’s germs but mine. But you also learn smart things – like washing your hands, and not touching yourself above the collarbone when you’re out and about.”

The nature of college life – which thrusts strangers into close quarters in dorms, lecture halls, libraries, computer labs, sweaty parties or unfamiliar beds – is particularly accommodating to communicable disease.

And even on college campuses as health-conscious as FLC’s, the nature of early adulthood – which leads young people of otherwise sound mind make unwise, if thrilling, decisions – is peculiarly conducive to mishap, psychological discontent and miscellaneous injury.

The maladies that appear in the student health center “run the gamut,” said Rene Klotz, nurse practitioner and clinical director.

“We see cold symptoms, illness generally, and lots of anxiety, depression and bad choices,” she said.

“But then someone comes in because their ear hurts and says, ‘I was swinging on a vine in Costa Rica during spring break, and it looks like I perforated my ear.’ It really keeps you on your toes,” she said.

The health center, in the great tradition of undergraduate medicine, is stuffed with informational pamphlets about pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, suicide prevention, eating disorders, birth control and flu shots.

Beyond that, there’s a thriving community of student-health activists, said Kendra Gallegos Reichle, student wellness coordinator, who, at the behest of undergraduates, organized last week’s expert panel about marijuana.

“Honestly, I really benefit from the insights of the students in the wellness group,” she said.

Reichle said for many FLC students – like undergraduates across the country – college presents an impossibly pressured environment, “where students are trying to balance everything out – academics, extracurriculars, work, trying to get enough sleep. And students here are really aware about alcohol and substance abuse, depression, anxiety and mental health issues – for sure.”

Even with all the resources and information available to students, Kevin Castillo, a junior biochemistry major, said, “It’s difficult to stay healthy here,” recalling April of 2014, when a nasty bout of flu knocked him out for two weeks.

“On a small campus, flu goes around. But, hopefully, there’s nothing else bad, like herpes,” he said, smiling.

He said he had seen undergraduates’ habit of hard-partying take its toll on friends and fellow classmates many, many times.

“Drinking, smoking – cigarettes and marijuana. You see people struggle with that,” he said.

Castillo said he is dogged by insomnia.

“I struggle to sleep, staying up late, doing homework. I had to make a rule: no more Red Bulls after 7 p.m. It was keeping me up.”

Castillo said he tries to take personal responsibility for his health.

But from losing that extra five pounds to quitting smoking to going to yoga, taking responsibility for one’s own health isn’t easy for full-blown grown ups, and it’s especially tough for people who are brand new to adulthood, Reichle said.

“When I was a college student, I was on my parents’ insurance and relied on them to tell me everything to do,” she said.

“Health care – tests, flu shots, checkups – can be intimidating and awkward,” she said. “But peers normalize it. If one student gets a flu shot in the Student Union from the health center nurse, and says, ‘Wow, that was a nice lady,’ suddenly, their friend thinks they can, too.”

Asked about keeping healthy on campus, Alyssa Prepentt, a freshman and tentative English major who was sitting in the dining hall, said, “It’s really hard,” pointing to her plate of food, which was dominated by curly fries.

She said both in terms of caring for her body and negotiating health care – previously her parents’ realm – it had been “hard to land in the adult world.”

“I don’t know how insurance works at all. So it’s great to have the health center, where they help you understand it all,” she said.

Like many FLC students, in addition to a full academic course load, she works 25 hours a week at south City Market.

The stress got to be too much first semester.

“So I went to the health center for mental-health issues. They gave me an anti-depressant,” she said.

Since then, Prepentt has been a frequent-flier at the health center. Still, given her packed schedule, she can’t find time to go to the gym.

“And I’m a vegetarian – so I’ve got a weak immune system and get sick quite a bit,” she said.

Anecdotally, students are aware that flu hits FLC hard. She said since winter struck, she has noticed “a lot of absences at my 8 a.m. classes.”

Still, as Prepentt – who, like many of her fellow classmates, comes across as incredibly bright, warm and unnervingly mature in person – progresses toward graduation, she may pick up practical survival tactics from upperclassmen who have endured their fair share of flu outbreaks at FLC.

“There are things you can do,” Thompson said. “In Information Technology, we wipe down the mice and keyboards with Clorox towels.”

cmcallister@durangoherald.com