Head Tale

I’m home with a sick kid today (plus had ice cream for breakfast as I have a sore throat myself!) so a rough couple of months in terms of family health continues…

Ironically, we only dealt with Covid once (Pace for a week in early October) and, knock on wood, no one else in the family tested positive then or since (though I’m constantly debating whether we’ve had it and just not tested positive or if it just missed us?  But based on a week of testing three people with no positives plus all the other bugs going around, a public health nurse at a clinic I helped organize at the library said she was certain the rest of us *didn’t* have Covid.  With that said, I will continue saying “I haven’t tested positive for Covid” as who really knows???)

(Oh, and had a funny exchange on that subject recently – a speaker at an event I organized came in and saw me wearing an N95.  “Do I have to wear a mask?”  “No, your choice” I replied “But I just happen to be one of the seven people left in Regina who’s never tested positive for Covid so still trying to mask as much as I can!”)

Anyhow, back to the family health tribulations…

Sasha’s been sick off and on for a couple months with a couple different issues and visits to a few different docs, I was sick for a couple weeks, Shea was as sick as she’s probably ever been a week ago (which is what I worry my sore throat is turning into), I recently had a minor operation that kept me at home and off my feet for a couple days, my mom was in hospital for a week so I took time off to support her and dad.  Really insane in a way how this has all come at once and pretty much the definition of the “sandwich generation“…except in our case, the meat in the middle is pretty sickly these days too!

My work’s payroll system allows you to see how much sick time you’ve taken so I looked back:

2022 (so far – year’s not over – and the vast majority in the past couple months)
Personal Sick – 20 incidences (meaning that may be full or partial days if I left early or Sasha’s school called that she was sick and I went to pick her up or whatever)
Family Sick – 8

2021
Personal Sick – 2
Family Sick – 1

2020 (To be fair, everyone was at home for a big part of this year.  But still…)
Personal Sick – 4
Family Sick – 0

2019
Personal Sick – 0
Family Sick – 4

2018
Personal Sick – 23 (this is the year I broke my wrist and had surgery on it.  Otherwise, likely would’ve been zero as I had no other sick days other than time off after breaking my wrist and having surgery on it.)
Family Sick – 3

2017
Personal Sick – 2
Family Sick – 2

2016
Personal Sick – 11 (had elbow infection followed by serious reaction to an antibiotic followed by a “lancing” that was just as fun as it sounds!)
Family Sick – 1

2015
Personal Sick – 3
Family Sick – 0

2014 (Shea home on maternity leave)
Personal Sick – 2
Family Sick – 1

So anyhow, this post is probably as much to reassure myself that I don’t overuse or abuse sick time (generally pretty healthy, often schedule appointments for days off if possible, etc.)  But the guilt about having been off so much in the past couple months does weigh on a person – even when it shouldn’t.

We have sick time for a reason, I’m fortunate to have been working for long enough that I have decent banks of time accumulated (I always feel sorry for new employees who don’t have much sick time or people in places where they don’t earn a lot) and of course, there’a always the risk of people coming to work when sick (and I should know better – my boss sent me home *twice* in one week when I stupidly kept trying to “tough it out”) then spreading it to others – something that’s especially relevant as Covid and RSV and the flu are *ripping* through workplaces these days.

Not to mention the fact that being a parent multiplies your odds of getting sick too – your kids are in classrooms that are *germ factories* so they often bring things home.  (We were lucky when Pace had Covid that he could pretty much isolate by himself for a week – I know parents who have gotten Covid from their younger children simply because they couldn’t fully isolate their kids.)

[Edit: Two other thoughts about sick time – I’ve increasing had people talking about their mental health and I’ve even argued with some managers who feel like they can define what is “appropriate” mental health time and what isn’t.  You sometimes get the sense that some think that a person working on their mental health has to stay in a dark room with the lights off, moaning under the covers.   But I know for a fact that someone who was on a stress leave was told specifically by their doctor *not* to do that – and to get outside and spend time in the sun and doing things they enjoyed.  In some ways, mental health is the ultimate “hidden” illness as its not usually visible to those around you but its impacts can be crippling if not fatal.

My other thought is how sick time can be divided if you’re a parent.  I know one couple where one partner works on the frontlines of the library so a bit harder for them to take sick time since they know that impacts coworkers if they’re not available to work on the desk or whatever.  Their partner has a desk job in an office so tends to take the majority of the sick time with their kids.  Shea and I are the opposite – she’s very short-staffed in her work and if she misses work, there is an actual possibility that her clients could end up in hospital or worse.  The work I do is important but I often joke that the biggest risk if I’m not there is someone gets their John Grisham hold late!

“Fever” – Peggy Lee