Sick Days

Back in the days when I was teaching in a nearby public school, I used to get 14 sick days at the start of each school year. I could use them to stay home on days that I was too sick to be in school or for days when I needed to go to a doctor appointment. I could request an entire sick day or just a half sick day, and any days not used by the end of the school year would rollover into the next year.

It was nice to know that if I had to be out sick, I could take a sick day and not have to give up a day’s worth of wages, but I rarely ever used them. Because the downside of taking a sick day is having to write up a sub plan, wherein you must spell out in great detail what is to be done in your classroom all day long. And then I would have to get all the materials in order so the substitute would have everything needed to teach all the day’s lessons. Honestly, it was usually a whole lot easier to show up and do the best I could than to call in sick.

But this past week, I would have given anything to have been able to call in sick to my SAHM gig. I thought I just had a cold, but man, did I feel awful and completely wiped out. My head was pounding, my nose was either completely stuffed up or running like a faucet, I was barking like seal, and my throat was so sore that I was trying to get by on a yogurt/ice cream diet along with cup after cup of hot tea. As the week went on, the coughing got worse and worse, to the point where I was unable to get a decent amount of sleep. I was pretty miserable, but thought I just needed to let the cold run its course until Friday morning when I woke up with my eyes glued shut with yellow/green gunk. At that point I knew that I needed to get to the doctor’s office.

And it was a good thing that I went, because it turns out that I have an upper respiratory infection, an ear infection, conjunctivitis, and a cough that requires full-strength prescription cough syrup. I left the doctors office with four prescriptions and orders to “take it easy” for a couple of days. Ha! No chance of that happening yesterday with two toddlers to care for.

So today, I called in sick. T agreed that the only way for me to really get some rest was for the kids to be out of the house. So Tiny and Buba are off visiting Grammy and Grandpa, and I am home in bed. Resting. And while it’s not the sort of “me time” I’ve been hoping for, so far it feels really good to just lay around and do nothing. I suppose I’ll catch up on blogs, watch a little Hulu, and do a some reading for bookclub, but it’s nice to know that I can just lay back and close my eyes anytime I want to. And hopefully, with T taking charge of the kiddos all weekend, by Monday, I’ll be as good as new.