Sick Leave

Tuesday January 29, 2008 | 13 comments (now closed)

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This is going to be a quick one.

I’m dying.

All right, maybe an overstatement but it sure felt that way this weekend and even as I write, I’m only halfway back following Tangina’s voice who knows where.

Over the weekend, more specifically at 10:06 p.m. EST Friday January 25, 2008 I contracted the flu. In my entire life, any time I have gotten sick, I have always woken with an illness. I go to sleep feeling a little worse for the wear and then wake up with full blown ebola. That’s the M.O. I’m accustomed to.

This time, it was like flipping a light switch. I felt fine all evening until I stepped outside to bring the dogs out. As I was out there, I felt a real deep chill. When I stepped back into the house, I couldn’t stop shivering. I decided right there to go to bed – maybe if I hid under the covers, I could hide from the boogeyman who had found me out there in the deep, dark night.

The next morning, I woke freezing. I took some Tylenol, threw on enough layers to do the Michelin Man proud and eventually my body temperature returned to normal. But all I had done was bought a Freedom Pass to this roller coaster. 2 hours of bone chilling cold followed by 2 hours of heat; rinse and repeat. Though I was popping a cocktail of Tylenol, Mortrin and some Midol for good measure, like some second-rate Max Payne, I couldn’t keep the chills or fever at bay for long.

Sunday was a repeat of Saturday. No change except I was trapped on the couch with nothing but sportscaster after sportscaster using the Buffer Zone Sunday before the big game to subliminally broadcast their inane ramblings into my head. I don’t know why this happens, but any time someone mentions the word “Asterick” I start predicting Giants 52 – Patriots 7. Weird!!!

Yesterday, I mosied into work to get my laptop, got trapped on a conference call before I finally made an exit – promising everyone I wouldn’t be back until I had this thing licked. My attendance has been sterling with only one sick day in 2007 and zero in 2006. So what if we’re only 29 days into 2008. Ya’ can’t plan for these things.

As it were, I know who infected me. It was someone, who despite his raging illness that had he not advertised by coughing, sneezing and spewing all manner of midichlorians during a meeting last Wednesday, he broadcast loud and clear by saying in this dumb sing-songy voice “You DON’T Want to Sit Next to Me.” Yeah, what a hero trouping into the office for our benefit!!! So, we got limited productivity out of that dude and now we lose who knows how much more productivity from all the drones he infested. Not everyone has a laptop nor the dumb desire to head into work to procure it. I’m sure we have a population just dying to catch up on Ellen.

Oh well, for the next day or two I’m sitting this one out. I awoke this morning on antibiotics (I have some nasty infection in my lungs) with a raging sinus headache and the sudden inability to breathe very well. I’ll check my e-mails from home, get some things done but until I have the energy back, I’m not heading back.

Assuming I survive.