Tag: sick day

An unwelcome visitor #SOL24 1/31

I knew for sure that I had an unwelcome visitor on Saturday. I’d heard the quiet knocking every morning for days, but tried to pretend it wasn’t coming: I went to bed early, but soon sleep started to elude me; I woke daily with a tickle in the back of my throat. By Saturday there was no ignoring the visitor: the virus had arrived.

“I think I’m sick,” I croaked at my spouse, as if my voice and the circles under my bleary eyes didn’t make this obvious.

“I think you are,” he replied, and set me on the couch to recuperate.

We’ve had viruses visit before, of course. Mostly we greet them with tea and honey; we entertain them with ridiculous series on Netflix or long cuddles with good books; always, we like to offer them plenty of rest. This satisfies most viruses. After a day or two, they thank us politely and move on, sometimes leaving behind a bit of a mess, but nothing that we can’t handle if we’re cautious.

This virus though, the one that came on Saturday, this one has overstayed its welcome. I tried to coddle it over the weekend, hoping that it would be willing to move on by Monday morning, but no. Instead, the virus – which had initially taken up residence in my throat – decided that it was too confined and expanded into my lungs and my sinuses. There, it stretched out. “Ah… just what I needed: more space.” It took a particular liking to my lungs and hung out there, making it hard for me to breathe.

So, I took the virus to the doctor’s office where we tried to take a picture of it, but it was shy and hid from the x-ray. “Well,” said the doctor, “at least it’s not Pneumonia. She always overstays her welcome – a real hanger-on, that one.” Pneumonia has visited both me and my spouse, so I knew exactly what the doctor meant. She is a terrible guest. “Still,” the doctor continued, “there are some truly ill-mannered viruses going around right now. This one may stay for days.”

I nodded my head, but I didn’t believe her. I know how to deal with a virus, and I don’t get sick very often. I wheezed my way home and curled up on my couch. I played puzzle games with my virus and watched lots of bad TV. We downloaded a mindless game app and played for hours. We drank unending pots of tea with honey. We knit, pet the dog and took naps. Still, the virus stayed. It fiddled with the thermostat, so I tried to help it get comfortable with some ibuprofen. Then, ungrateful, it spent Monday evening painting my throat bright red. “Much better,” it squealed. After that, it yelled at me whenever I swallowed, “You’re ruining the paint job!”

Every afternoon, I checked in with my virus. “Maybe you could leave tomorrow?” I asked. The virus laughed, and watched me write increasingly tearful emails to the vice principal, telling her that I needed to be out yet again. Last night, as I created the fifth day of lesson plans, the virus was not even remotely helpful. In fact, it laughed even harder and said, “I *might* leave tomorrow, but I’m just not sure yet. Maybe you should go in just to see what I do.” I’d gotten wise to it, though. I knew that it just wanted to stay longer, so I called in sick and sent the (now pretty pathetic) lesson plans.

Today is the seventh day of the virus’s visit. I’ve told it that my spouse and I don’t typically welcome guests for more than a week without consulting with one another, so it is reluctantly packing up. The paint job it had so delighted in has largely faded, and it’s moved into a smaller space, mostly in my throat. I’ve offered it more tea and sleep, but I think it’s starting to crave something different, hopefully something it can’t find in this house. By Monday, this unwelcome visitor should be gone, and I should be back to work. Fingers crossed.

Forswunk

I felt fine when I woke up on Sunday morning. Well, maybe not 100%, but pretty good. We had a fun morning ahead, so I took something for my headache and got on with the day. By lunchtime, I knew the headache wasn’t going away. And I was starting to realize that my digestive system was also unhappy. Plus, I was exhausted despite a good night’s sleep. I was sick.

Before I could ease my aching body into a warm tub, I checked our public health site: none of my symptoms warranted a COVID test in a vaccinated adult. Phew. I’d gotten the flu shot the day before, and my symptoms *did* match reactions to that.

The day wore on. I didn’t get any better, and I didn’t get any work done. Sometime Sunday evening, through the haze of the headache and nausea, I recognized my dilemma: should I call in sick?

This was a more complicated decision than usual. This year, secondary teachers teach two two-and-a-half-hour classes every day for one week. The next week, we “only” teach one of those blocks, though to different students. On paper, this looks reasonable, but in reality, it’s exhausting. Planning lessons that are effective, engaging, and well-paced – and also accessible to students who can’t attend in person if they are sick or quarantining – and that work within the arc of a week (because 9 days later, few students remember exactly what we were doing), well, it’s a lot. Being in the classroom, on my feet, engaging students, making changes on the fly, making sure everyone is learning, for five hours: also a lot. Add in a few meetings – at least two per week – outside of class time and then, of course, the marking. That’s really a lot. 

Taken altogether, this means that every weekend I need to work for at least five or six hours just to keep up. Is this a strain on my family? Yes. Is this a strain on me? Yes. Should I be doing something different, more efficient, more effective, more… I don’t know… better? Probably, but this is what I’ve got right now and, frankly, I’m too tired to choose anything else.

And now I was sick, so I’d lost most of my weekend planning and marking time. Pre-Covid, I could have waited to see how I felt Monday morning; there was a good chance I would feel fine and I hate missing classes. Plus, my grade 9 class does best with consistency, already hard to maintain with nine days between classes. Pre-Covid, I wouldn’t have worried that calling in sick first thing in the morning would mean that one of my colleagues would have to cover my class. They still would have covered my class, of course, but they wouldn’t have been so incredibly tired; their prep time wouldn’t have been so incredibly necessary. If I declared my absence Sunday night, the school could hire a supply teacher instead of further swamping someone who was already up to their eyeballs in muck. And then there’s the truth that pre-Covid, I wouldn’t have been facing down a week so busy that I already felt smothered; I would have been better able to spread out my work; I would have had more flexibility because I wouldn’t have been planning for huge swaths of time and not everything had to be pre-created and available online. 

I was forswunk*, exhausted before I even began. Even the decision to take a sick day was overwhelming.

In the end, I took the day. I forced my muddled brain to re-write the lessons I had so that they would be accessible to a supply teacher, emailed all the right people, and fell, exhausted, into my bed.  I did, indeed, feel a good bit better on Monday, though I needed a lot of extra sleep. And what did I do on my sick day? I worked.

Forswunk. Overworked. No idea why that word is obsolete.

*https://www.wordsense.eu/forswunk/