With the fall semester barely under way, the recent explosion of sore throats, runny noses and headaches have been plaguing Texas Tech students across the campus.
Lynne Franke, nurse manager of Student Health Services, said she has never seen such a surge of sick students at this point in the semester.
"This is the busiest fall I've ever seen," she said. "We've been very busy."
Franke said the unwelcome abundance of cold-like symptoms among students could be attributed partially to allergies and partially to a circulating virus.
"We have seen a lot of an upper-respiratory virus," she said. "We've also seen cold-like symptoms."
Franke said the inordinate amount of allergies among Lubbock residents could be attributed to high pollen counts.
"There are a lot more allergies (this year compared to previous years)," Franke said. "There is a very high pollen count, especially ragweed. This is the season for ragweed, and a lot of people are highly allergic to it."
Dane McWilliams, a sophomore business major from Allen, said he started feeling poorly shortly after arriving in Lubbock in late August.
"Within the first week of school I started to not feel well," McWilliams said.
His symptoms aligned with those Franke described.
"I had a sore throat, a runny nose, a headache and a low-grade fever," McWilliams said. "It made it hard to focus in class."
He said he started to feel better after a few days, but he has noticed many of his peers getting colds.
Ila Workman, a nurse at the office of Dr. Al-Alami Bachar, said she has seen a substantial increase in patients who come in with allergies or colds in comparison to previous years.
"The increase in colds and allergies are caused by the dry weather and different changes in temperature," she said.
Workman said dry winds were also key to the expansion in allergy symptoms.
Amanda MacQuoid, a junior psychology major from Kingwood, said she has been sick for the past three weeks.
She also said she believes more people have been getting sick this year than previous years at the same point in the semester.
"I'm still sick," MacQuoid said. "I'm just stuffed up."
Taking a different stance on the issue, Dr. Robert J. Mamlock said allergies and cold-like symptoms always expand during the early fall months, and this year is little different.
"Over the past decade, wheat pollen spore counts have been high during the September and October," Mamlock said.
He said the number of patients he sees because of allergies and colds always booms around this time of the year.
He said in all of the years he has been practicing in Lubbock, he has noticed a pattern of people and assumes every-year allergies are getting increasingly worse.
"Seasonally, this is just the time of year that we have a great amount of pollen in the air," said Mamlock. "That can trigger a lot of problems."
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