on being sick, and sick days

[quietann]

So, I am home from work today because of this ^$*&* cold. After 4 days of trying to "work through" it, I have decided that I need a day of rest if I'm going to shake it.

Now, Tufts gives me unlimited sick time -- and I do not abuse it. Had I been working in a place that is more stingy, this fall would have been troublesome, given how many colds I have had, and the 6 or so days taken for surgery, recovering from surgery, and the endoscopy.

But a lot of people wouldn't take today as a sick day, were they in my position. To a lot of people, "sick" means high fever, you can't get out of bed, and/or you are spending all your time in the bathroom barfing and or running at the other end. And a lot of low end jobs will just fire you if you are home sick for more than a day or two.

So what's better, taking a day to rest in hopes of shortening the total illness duration, or working because you are not "sick enough" to really need to stay home?

Because of the flu vaccine shortage, the state is urging employees to take sick time if they need to, and employers to be a bit more generous about letting ill people have time off. People who have the flu shouldn't be out in public; it spreads easily, including when one is symptomatic. It can kill people, especially those in risk groups, who can't be expected to lock themselves at home for the entire winter. But all this is mitigated by the American tendency to push for "greater productivity" and the lack of paid sick time in many workplaces and the fact that parents often take sick days to take care of their sick kids. I did get a flu shot (I am in two high risk groups, p;ossibly three), but I am waiting to see what happens if we have a bad flu season this year...

Comments

[dancingdeer.livejournal.com]

Growing up, my mom's rule was that if we didn't have a fever, we weren't sick. End of story. I did get to go home early from school when I got cramps, but that was obviously amazingly debilitating, especially since I didn't know you could take drugs for them, and nobody told me.
I still feel that internally, but some of the best feelings of relief I've had have been upon deciding that I was feeling rather ick (like you have been), and that I don't *need* to go to work. That realization is remarkably freeing.
Rest up, feel better, don't feel guilty.

[gosling.livejournal.com]

hmm... by that rule I would have been in at work when I was too sick to stand up...

(I don't seem to ever get a fever of any significance no matter how sick I am. In the last decade I can only recall having an elevated temperature *once*, and then it was barely over 99, and I was rather scarily sick. Of course my baseline temperature is a bit low to begin with...)

Of course I also *do* tend to go into work when I am really way, way too sick to be there... And I certainly remember more than one time arguing with my parents because they thought I was clearly too sick to go to school (I was) but I felt that I needed to be there. (Why yes, I *was* a ridiculously hyper-responsible kid...)

[quietann.livejournal.com]

By that standard, when I was 11, I would have gone into a diabetic coma at school, rather than being taken to the doctor several times because I had "some sort of weird flu" that just wouldn't go away.

I didn't have a fever, leading up to the diabetes diagnosis. People rarely do. What I did have was going from 72 lbs. to 52 lbs. in 6 weeks, and by the end, drinking several gallons of juice each day (and getting up all night to pee and drink more). When I finally did get to a doctor who had a clue -- who knew what was going on when I walked into the office because of how I smelled -- I got packed off to the hospital, stat! without even getting to go home for a toothbrush.

Of course, I'm assuming your mom would have flexed her rule for something like this, or other serious problems that don't involve a fever...

[dancingdeer.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, I'd assume so too. Luckily, there weren't any of those, really. The major thing was that I got bad nasty colds every winter, that lasted most of the winter (although the really nasty bad parts only lasted a week or so at a time), and for those, I still went to school; just with a box of tissues and a really red nose.

[bedfull-o-books.livejournal.com]

I have been much better about staying home since the time I "worked through" a really bad cold and thus infected my entire office right before the holidays....

Another problem is that employers are so short-term minded. They don't think, "Hey, if I let this one sick person stay home for a few days, the rest of my staff might not become infected...." One suspects they aren't very bright....

Wondering about this year's flu season too.

Hope you feel better soon.

[klingonlandlady.livejournal.com]

Yeah, i gave myself permission to stay home doing nothing for a couple days, last flu- several weeks ago now. I think it did prevent it from getting worse or dragging on longer as it could have. Employers should figure it out that productivity is better if you don't have sick people in the office, oping about and infecting each other.

[jim-p.livejournal.com]

There's a couple of different takes on setting the bar for the illness excuse rather high. One is the puritanical notion that you simply have to work unless one is really, truly, absolutely incapacitated. Another is the employer squeezing as much out of their employees as they can in this tight economy. Another is an employer's fundamental mistrust of employees (i.e. assuming they'll take advantage of overly generous sick policies to take frivolous leave). All of this, of course, is the perception on the part of who you're trying to get excused from. It has fairly little to do with your state.

For my part, I believe that if I'm sick enough so that it affects my work, it's best in the long run if I take the momentary productivity hit of a day's rest. If I drag myself into work anyway in such a state I'm likely to work at half-efficiency at best, and make serious mistakes in the other half that I'll only have to do over anyway. The resulting "invisible" productivity hit is likely to be much more than one day.

[gosling.livejournal.com]

A day of rest sounds like a really good idea at this point.

I hope you feel better soon!

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

A former boss' sick policy was: If you're sick, stay home. If you come into work sick and pass your illness on to him, and he passes on to his child. You get to babysit the sick child.

I don't know if he ever enforced his policy, but it got the point across that some things shouldn't be shared.