I had not forgotten what it was like to be sick, or at least hadn’t forgotten any more than I ALWAYS forget what it’s like to be sick (a fresh surprise every single time: how minor a cold seems when you DON’T have one, and how major and miserable it feels when you DO), but it had been such a long time. Two years without anything more than seasonal allergies and political stress hives!
I don’t know how I got whatever it is I have, but probably at work. I touch a lot of things that other people have recently touched. And I wear a mask at work, but there has been such a long stretch of focusing on an illness that spreads through the AIR (and feeling exasperated at measures designed to carefully wipe down surfaces instead), and so I may not have been as vigilant as I should have been about, say, not rubbing the corner of my eye when it was itchy, or whatever.
Anyway, I am sick. Sore throat, cough, sneezing, runny nose; a mild fever (highest was 100.5) yesterday and the day before, but gone today. My hope is that I am on the upswing, because yesterday I didn’t feel like sitting upright for very long, let alone having thoughts or typing words, and today I have had several lie-downs but am also up for typing some words. I took a rapid Covid test on Saturday morning: negative. Another rapid test Sunday morning: negative. I went for a PCR test yesterday [update: negative]. [Update: rapid test Thursday morning negative.]
I don’t know anymore when to go to the doctor. Before the pandemic, my feeling was that when you get sick, you stay sick for awhile, and unless something is Very Alarming and/or Very Specific (a fever of 104F, for example, or a very painful ear), you wait for it to go away; if it won’t go away in what feels like a normal amount of time, or if it BECOMES Alarming, then you go to the doctor. But this worldview also involved going to work while sick, of course. Which, at my current workplace, finally, finally, FINALLY is at least CURRENTLY actively discouraged. When I called in, my supervisor thanked me for not coming into work. (Compare this to my bakery job, when I called in because I was throwing up, and my supervisor asked me to come in anyway. To work with food. Or my in-home eldercare job, when I was coughing and running a low fever, and they told me they really needed me to come to work anyway. To work closely with elderly people.) But still, even in a supportive environment: I don’t know how many days a person can miss work before they go to the doctor and get told it’s just a virus.
I also don’t know how our new “People should stay home when they’re sick!!” idea goes with jobs that have no sick pay, and no available staff to cover the positions. It seems like without support (sick pay, available staff), this is just scolding people for doing what everyone knows they need to do. I know this is not a new thought; it’s just that we are over two years into this and I haven’t seen any action, even at my workplace that has theoretically shifted its view. I don’t have sick pay. We don’t have anyone to cover for me when I’m gone, so my co-workers, who already have their own jobs to do, have to do my work as well as their own; this obviously puts pressure on me to return as quickly as possible. But I don’t know what the solution is, since it also doesn’t make sense to have extra employees hanging around just in case someone calls in sick.
“it also doesn’t make sense to have extra employees hanging around just in case someone calls in sick.”
This. This right here. This is why schools cannot find substitutes any more, because this is exactly what substitute teachers are. Instead, whole cadres of children are shuffled around, re-assigned to teachers who don’t know them, or crammed, en masse, into large “holding” rooms like auditoriums, gyms, and cafeterias to be supervised (NOT taught) by underpaid paraprofessionals who are not trained or licensed for such a job.
It’s a disgrace. This pandemic has revealed, and widened, the cracks in our social systems, but instead of repairing the cracks, the culture has just allowed them to widen, swallowing up people, and families, and whole industries. What Is Wrong has never in modern memory been so apparent and so wilfully ignored.
It’s an ugly thing to watch such a shameful chapter in history just UNFOLD before our eyes. If the pandemic couldn’t change things, it’s terrifying to think what kind of catastrophe change would require.
I’m so sorry you’re sick! It’s rotten to get any kind of virus, and these days it feels like everybody is sick, all the time. We’re making up for two years of being relatively crud-free.
My kids’ school extended the number of acceptable absences since covid. Even so, my daughter, who seems to catch everything and get it bad, ran out of unexcused days. Even though I explained that she was NOT WELL, some teachers gave her a hard time for not keeping up by checking in on the online classroom. Now I’m caught up deciding whether to take her to the doctor when I know it’s just a cold (expensive and pointless), send her to school and risk infecting other kids (jerk move), and a truancy investigation (may not end up being serious, but terrifies me even if I know I am a caring and responsible mother). In the fall she starts a different school and I dread dealing with this issue.
It feels like a weird world of contradictory health and wellness values.
This just happened to our family. I emailed our family doctor and the office faxed a doctor’s note to the school telling them to excuse future absences due to illness and/or severe menstrual cramps. I have sooo many thoughts about the absence policy that was written many years before a global pandemic and no longer seems applicable. // Also, my workplace offers an extra vacation day if you complete one calendar year with no sick time taken. SMH.
I’m recently sick for the first time in more than two years too and it’s dreadful. I had a cold and then I went straight into my children’s flu and basically I’ve been sick for a month. Germs shouldn’t be allowed.
I have the EXACT same thoughts about when should you go to a doctor.
We do have a problem with the no sick pay/no one to cover for you – and I wish I had a solution. Until we find one, people will continue to come to work sick (hopefully with something “mild” like a cold; which still sucks) because they need the money. It’s awful.
I hope you feel better soon.
Our family has gotten some colds since schools dropped masking a few weeks ago. We kept sick kids home from school /activities until they had negative COVID tests. The school was fine with it, but a ballet teacher gave us a hard time with keeping a kid home from class while sick during a pandemic. You’re right that society hasn’t evolved much beyond lip service for granting people time to rest/not spread germs. Hope you feel better soon!
I’m so sorry to hear you’re sick.
I disagree (philosophically, not with the point that this is how “we” run things) that it “doesn’t make sense to have extra employees hanging around just in case someone calls in sick.” Yes, it does. Some level of redundancy is good — it allows people to call in sick, and also means that if/when someone is really sick, or leaves, someone else knows how to do what they do. Sure, we can’t have a duplicate position for every position everywhere, but when I started work ~30 years ago, I’m pretty sure that there was a lot more redundancy/support than there is now, and think its decline is a bad thing. Maybe good for the bottom line in the short term, but otherwise (including for the bottom line), bad.
Yes yes yes. The opposite of efficiency is resiliency, which is to say that having some employees who have a slow day or some empty hospital beds may seem like a waste, but the point is to make sure that employees get the down time they need (you cannot fix exhaustion or illness by banging pans gratefully) and that you’re not desperately trying to have the things you need be available before you run out.
We understand this in our own lives: Most of us have more than one plate/bowl/fork per person, we have a to-be-read pile(s), we have stuff on the DVR. But once it’s an organization with jobs, we’re supposed to embrace just-in-time production? Ugh.
Thinking of you. And I absolutely think it makes sense to have redundancy. That way people CAN get sick, and go on vacation, and have child-care emergencies. More staff = more flexibility.
So I’m in Canada. And I work in some level of government and thus have decent benefits, including a lot of sick time.
But our team is so small, and our workload so busy (especially currently) that sick time is discouraged (by attitude of coworkers and us not wanting to increase stress/workload for others, not actively). Working from home is actively discouraged by a very senior member of staff. To the point that my coworker was forced to stay in the office while sick. So I got sick, tried to work from home, but was actively discouraged, and so I got my partner (who also works at the same place), and two other coworkers sick. Including the sr staffer who won’t let anyone else from home. That Sr staffer got our last coworker sick.
We’ve been short staffed for 3+ weeks now across all departments when we probably would have avoided it all if we’d just been allowed to work from home. In admin jobs that are perfectly suited to working from home.
I am infuriated! And it’s no better in Canada where we tend to think we learn faster than the USA
I too am in Canada and work for a level of government. My experience is not at all the same as yours though, and I think it’s senior management that makes all the difference – where I am going to work sick is actively discouraged and when our senior folks get sick they work from home or take sick leave, and they expect everyone else to either work from home if they can, or take sick leave if they can’t. My Senior Director was sick all last week and didn’t work, and this week she’s working from home, even though her Covid tests are negative, because she’s better but not yet “well” and doesn’t want to spread anything.
The pandemic prompted NY to pass a law requiring most employers to offer some sick leave. There are additional nuances, but basically employers with 100 or more employees must provide up to 56 hours of paid sick leave per year, employers with 5 to 99 employees must provide up to 40 hours of paid sick leave per year, and there are some additional requirements for employers with <4 employees. Hopefully other states will follow suit. It is not perfect (and still not always enough leave), but has been a godsend for many.
We’ve hit the point at which we actually do take our kid to the doctor anytime she has respiratory symptoms, even if they’re things we would’ve ridden out in the past. She wears a mask indoors, but not during lunch and not recess. She’s gotten several respiratory things during the 2021-2022 school year, and I’m no longer even feeling badly about taking her to the doctor.
If it weren’t for long covid, I would probably be less worried about it. Someone I knew in college developed long covid, and it sounds like it really decimated his life. I do not want my kid hit with long-term (possibly lifetime?), poorly-understood, no-known-cure issues. I don’t want my husband or myself hit with them, either. We’re pretty good right now, and I’d really prefer to keep it that way.
I feel you here. My husband drives a school bus and they dropped the masking and voila he got the crud. He passed it on to me and I ended up with Bronchitis which I did end up going to the doctor for (viral) but he gave me some stuff to help the symptoms along. (And they also gave me a Covid test-negative).
I sort of expected this because we have been well for two years and now we are exposed to all those little kid germs.
The expectation at my work is to work remotely if you are sick, which makes it hard to recover (although it is nice to have the option). I did end up taking two days off as sick because I felt awful. Expectations are work, work, work, even though we have an awesome sick leave policy. I really feel for those who have no sick leave and no coverage and are expected to show up anyway…excuse me did you forget there is a pandemic out there!
Just checking in on you, sorry you’re sick. Not to be alarmist but are you sure it’s not Covid? When I got it (from my son who got it at school) I felt a bit sick from Tuesday night but tested negative on the home test until Friday morning when the pharmacy antigen was positive. I guess by now you’re out of the woods, and of course you did a PCR which I didn’t and is likely more sensitive. I had usual cold symptoms and low fever but one weird thing which was slight coughing that woke me up in the night – but that also felt like, maybe I’m just thirsty. In fact no, it was Covid. I got better in a week after many big sleeps and naps. I hope you’re feeling better!
I DON’T think it’s alarmist, and am VERY MUCH NOT SURE it’s not Covid! I’m up to four negative tests now, but am STILL not sure.
There are good immunological reasons that people with covid symptoms are testing negative on an antigen test for many days before testing positive, if they ever test positive. Vaccination and/or prior infection gets the immune system into gear, which causes some symptoms, when there’s a re-exposure. My 15-y.o. had a brief fever on a Saturday and didn’t test positive until Wednesday.
The good news is the negative antigen tests are neither meaningless nor wrong, even if you actually are infected with covid. The RATs are meant to indicate whether you are infectious to other people, not whether there is any covid in your system.
The title of this post made me extremely nervous and I am Very Glad that you don’t have Covid (although… it is so hard to feel like you can RELY on the tests; I was ill a while back and it seemed SO Covid-y, and yet I had two negative at-home tests and a negative PCR, so it wasn’t… but… WAS IT?) and I am Very Glad that none of your family have Covid either, which was my first thought after your post about your kids’ school. UGH.
I am hoping that you are feeling much better by now, and that none of your family caught it.
And I wholeheartedly agree about not knowing when to go to the doctor anymore. What qualifies? It all feels both so dire and so… not. I don’t know. Things are weird. I’m glad you posted and I hope things are on the upswing.
My youngest son brought home something, we all got it, thought it had gone away, then 3/4 of us tested positive for Covid, additional symptoms appeared. Thankfully it was mild as we’re all vaccinated, however, the youngest never testing positive is baffling! This was all on home tests but still! Somehow we avoided it for 2 years and unfortunately a lot of people we know are getting it just now. Hope everyone is better now swistle!