Sick Days

The last time I was out sick, I had to send my team an email that I wasn't going to be available. As I was typing up that email, some small part of me wondered if my team members were going to think I was a slacker. Now, it's not like this is a common occurrence. I miss work pretty infrequently, and I've probably taken something like four or five sick days for the entirety of the year. Still, I couldn't help but feel a small twinge of guilt for not being available.

On second thought, though, I realized that it's a small miracle that I don't end up sick more often. Remember, my house turns into a day care during the day. That means that there are constantly little kids running around, getting their cooties all over everything. As a coworker of mine once said, "little kids are vectors of infection for the first few years. Then everyone involved builds an immunity, and things get better." You can clean as much as you want, but it's a losing battle. You're bound to miss something, and sooner or later, you get sick. Even better, older children "graduate" from the daycare, so I am guaranteed to deal with little kids during their infection-vector phase.

To add more fuel to the fire, I get up really early. In fact, I am often in the office before most others have even considered getting up. In case you've never gotten up at the crack of dawn, it's cold at that hour. It's not cold enough for a body part to fall off, but it is cold enough that I intentionally keep my jacket in an easy-to-reach spot. You figure that's bound to tax your body a little bit, right? Mix in the fact that my work day is longer than the traditional 9 to 5, and it suddenly sounds like I should be an incubation factory for every variant on the common cold and flu you can imagine.

Despite all of that, though, my immune system does an exemplary job of keeping me healthy enough to go to work. Remember, I've only used a handful of sick days, and I still get all of my work done. Funnily enough, the exemplary immune system seems to hold true even when I feel ill enough to miss work. I've often remarked to friends that I get "one day colds." I will feel all sorts of crappy in the morning, so I will decide to avoid becoming a vector of infection myself. Given that, I usually choose to sleep a few extra hours to give my body a chance to fight off whatever it is I'm dealing with. And sure enough, by about noon or so, I usually feel much better. Heck, I've been known to check my email, or otherwise be productive, in the afternoon.

That's great for me, but it doesn't help to dispel the notion that I might just be skipping work. Incidentally, I think this is also why I felt that initial twinge of guilt. I once mentioned my "one day cold" theory to a coworker, and he replied that he used to get those in school on the day of tests. How's that for a guilt trip?

I think I'm going to have to start guzzling a whole heck of a lot more orange juice, just in case. I'm not sure I would feel right wearing one of those masks in my own house.