Dr. Wallace: I’m 14 and live alone with my mom. My parents divorced when I was 10 so Mom and I have been alone for quite some time. Mom is wonderful, but she does have one huge fault. She never believes me when I tell her I’m sick.

No matter how miserable I feel with an upset stomach, a splitting headache or a sore throat, she insists I go to school. Last year I had a perfect attendance even though I went to school a half dozen times feeling miserable. I don’t know why she has this thing about my missing a day of school. It’s not like the school is going to give me an award for missing the fewest number of days.

What can I do to make her realize that when I say I’m sick, I’m really sick? I’m a good student and a model citizen, so I don’t need this kind of treatment — Nameless, Oklahoma City, Okla.

Nameless: Some students use the “I’m not feeling so good” routine as an excuse to miss school. But a wise parent can usually tell when the “illness” is the real thing. Good students who are also model citizens enjoy school and rarely want to be absent. You fit in this category. It’s also important for parents not to insist that their children attend school when they are ill. In crowded classrooms, contagious illness can spread rapidly.

Dr. Wallace: Several months ago, you stated that once a person is drunk, nothing will help them get sober. That isn’t true. My boyfriend doesn’t drink a lot, but once in a while, he’ll have one or two too many. When this happens, I drive to the nearest fast-food restaurant and get him a large, hot black coffee. Once he finishes the coffee, he is sober. Please learn the true facts before you print something. — Sober Coffee Drinker

Sober Coffee Drinker: Once a person is under the influence of alcohol, the only remedy is the passage of time. Time alone is the only cure. Hot black coffee, cold showers, strenuous exercise and other popular remedies do not work because they cannot increase the rate at which a human body disposes of alcohol. These so-called remedies can be dangerous when they give people a false sense of alertness.

If your boyfriend gradually sobers up while drinking the coffee you provide him, I posit that it is the time that passes between the purchase of the coffee and that spent sitting and drinking it that is the true contributing factor to his gradual sobriety.

It takes roughly one hour for the body to eliminate one standard alcoholic drink. The liver is limited to breaking down roughly one drink per hour.

All hot coffee does after a round of excessive drinking is fill you with caffeine and, in some cases, provide a false sense of security that all is well, sometimes well before this is actually true.

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Dr. Wallace welcomes questions from readers. Although he is unable to reply to all of them individually, he will answer as many as possible in this column. Email him at rwallace@galesburg.net.

SCrt 2017, Creators Syndicate Inc.