When Is a Sick Day That's Not a Sick Day Really a Sick Day?

by Allegra

It bothers us when we miss a day writing here.  We need to stop believing that we need to be Superwoman, that we need to be perfect.  It's just one of the many old tapes that we're trying to work on, to erase.

We've had a cold for the last two weeks or so.  Symptoms come and go, but we can't seem to get rid of it.  We've taken two sick days recently, and we don't want to use up more time.  The problem is that while we do get rest while we're at home, we also have enough time on our hands to slide into all the feelings that cause us stress and weaken our immune system in the first place.

So today we left work at lunchtime not because we still felt ill, but because we had a late-afternoon appointment with our psychiatrist.  Our commute to work is 90 minutes door-to-door in each direction.  Multiply that times two, times 250 work days a year, times 25 years at this job.....we're not sure how much time we've lost from our life commuting, but it's no wonder so many of our others are upset with how much working takes over our life.

The psychiatrist appointment was routine; she only does medication management, not therapy, which is the way we want it anyway.  It's not a good idea to start doing therapy on a patient who's already been in therapy for over ten years straight (15 now), especially when that patient is multiple.

Back to being sick....We'd had cold sores on and off for a couple of weeks, plus pain in our jaw that we thought might be residual from the installation of a crown without root canal.  Throw in the foibles of menopause, which is still in its early stages, so we never know when or if Aunt Flo is going to show up.  Nowadays it seems to be every other month.

But during the last couple of years our PMS symptoms have escalated to the realm of PMDD, where among other things, the mood swings are severe enough to be debilitating.  We don't self-harm.  Our paternal grandfather committed suicide when we were 11 and a half, so we know firsthand what it's like to lose someone that way.  This is not to say that we've never had self-destructive thoughts.  But we don't act on them, no matter how miserable we feel, because we know that we'd cause more misery for many people if we did.

So with the cold sores, the hormone fluctuations, the mood swings, work-related stress, rapid weather changes, migraine....it's no wonder we're still sick.  We started having weird tickly sneezes a couple of days ago, and while we've never had seasonal allergies, we figured we'd try some Claritin to see if it would help.  The effect was minimal.  By this morning, we knew we had a full-blown cold, and we'd need to get pseudoephedrine pills, which are pretty much guaranteed to knock out the germs.

So we picked up a package after the doctor's appointment and took a dose shortly before 6pm.  And we're starting to feel better, albeit with a bit of what we call the "pseudoephedrine fog."  It's not drowsiness, but we do feel medicated.  And feeling better is a good thing.