I called in sick yesterday for the 12-hour city shift I was supposed to work today. I told them if I was forty, I might consider coming in, but I am much older (67) (and wiser), so I said I needed to rest. They told me I sounded horrible and to rest and be well. I appreciated that.
Last year, I had a similar episode only I didn’t book off my shift. Big mistake. It turned into pneumonia and I was sick for over a month.
I was looking through my blog and I wrote this (Called in Sick) back in January of 2010.
I did yesterday what I rarely ever do. I called in sick. I was feeling like crap at work on Sunday, and knew Monday would be worse so I called in, and said I’m sorry, I’m sick.
I went years without missing a scheduled shift. It was a point of pride. My name is in the book, I’m working. Life is different now. I have a family and I’m past 50. I take days off. And now, when sick, I actually call in and say I can’t work.
Now before I praise myself too much, I am here on the job today working 16 hours and trying not to cough a lung out. I do feel much better. Yesterday was lay in bed motionless for hours, waiting for the fever to pass, then getting up staggering down the hall, watching an hour of TV, then staggering back to the bedroom, exhausted to lay again motionless for hours. Today, I was actually rested. The fever is gone and, barring relapse, all that remains and will likely remain for at least a month is my nasty cough, my annual winter companion. I have found that the tessoln pearles I discovered last winter actually do help contain the cough. So no more embarrassing displays of outcoughing my patients. (But after a call now, I do have to force myself to cough up the phlegm to help keep the lungs as clear as possible).
Getting sick sucks, but it does give you some insight into what it might feel like to be a real patient. If I feel like death, like I will never be well again, but I am well hydrated and my pulse is only 72, and my sat is 99%, and my fever barely a 100, what must it feel like to be really sick?
My annual cold reports:
2009/10: Dueling Coughs
2008: Medicine For Paramedics
2007: Sick
2006: Hacking
Now at the end of 2025, I have just been sitting around the house, either laying in bed or in the one chair I am allowed to sit in in the living room. Every time I cough, I get glared at. No one else in my family is sick yet and I hope it stays that way.
I worked a road shift last week, and shame on me, I didn’t wear a mask till have way through the day when I realized most of my patients likely had the flu themselves, as did nearly all the patients in the hospital triage lines and those lining the corridors in beds. Germs in the air. By the end of the day I was wearing an N95 mask and face shield, and vigorously scrubbing my hands after every call. I didn’t get COVID till the very end of the epidemic, and I credit that to wearing masks. From now on every time December flu season rolls around, I am masking up through March.
Stay well all, and Happy New Year!
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of the House
With the Winter Flu Blues again – Bob Dylan* (Heard in my severe flu/cough medicine dreams)