On Taking a Sick Day

Being sick is not good.

It’s almost like a biological coup d’etat; your body, as the divisive faction, makes a sudden and violent overthrow of the reigning establishment. Everything is thrown into chaos as your renegade digestive and reproductive systems work in tandem to neutralize your higher functions of reasoning and seize control of your infrastructures and defense centers. One minute, you’re happily in control and being productive, and the next, you’re the French Fourth Republic.

Eventually one has to succumb to the silent pleas of coworkers who are tired of hearing you replicate the 5th Symphony in mucus and miserably slink out of work. Our societal obsession with constant communication, however, requires the setting up of an elaborate system of apologies to every other non-sick professional contact possible via voicemail and that great ambassador of absenteeism, the Out of Office Assistant. You also must firehose your cell and Blackberry number to everyone in the office, assuring them that they can reach you at any time, thus turning your home into your office and somewhat negating the point of leaving work in the first place. And to assuage your guilt at leaving the office, you pick up a massive stack of files to carry out with you just so people see it. “Just rest!” they assure you as you stagger out with your pile of fake work. “No,” you say, “I wouldn’t want to…cough cough…get behind and let the company down.”

Cue sunset and swelling classical score. What a brave little soldier. (Good thing they don't realize those files are actually just back copies of InStyle magazine.)

So home you go, but the worst part of the whole ordeal is that taking a sick day from work is like taking a vacation that you don’t really enjoy that much. You’re doing all the things you’d normally love to be doing instead of going to work…only you can’t enjoy them. It’s the cock tease of the work world. Normally, spending an entire day sleeping on the couch, having peanut butter and Saltine cracker sandwiches and gingerale for every meal, and watching Coronation Street for hours on end would be a fabulous treat. But the allure of curling up with a hot water bottle and a stack of trashy magazines fades when one must do it afloat in a sea of crispy Kleenexes. Your mouth tastes like dirty pennies. Your joints ache and even the hair on your arms hurts. You’re barking like a harbour seal and your throat burns like you’ve been huffing WD40 for three days. There is no such thing as elegant sick; it’s difficult to relax in a soothing bubble bath listening to Enya and enjoying a steaming cup of Jasmine tea when one is a Play-Doh Flem Factory. There is no such thing as sexy sick. Or even pretty sick.

So the only option to truly enjoy your sick day is to spend it unconscious. Do yourself a favour; abuse over the counter medications such as Dramamine for their drowsy side effects and you’ll thank yourself when you awake, whole and healthy, three days later. Be liberal with your dosage; you don't want to be even semi-awake if the Metallica 'One' video has taught us anything. A Neo Citron Toddy may be your only way out.

And at least you won’t be thinking about how sad it is that you had to spend a precious day off wishing you were more diligent about cleaning the bathroom floors while you’re humping the toilet and praying for death.

For M and J - get better soon.