You're on my list, throat.Follow

So last night I get home from my first day back on the job since this bitchass cold struck, and as I chat with my mother on the phone and then with Joph at the house, I realize something: my voice is slowly dwindling. I consider calling in sick to work, but in the vein of hospitals everywhere, we don't actually have sick leave anymore, and it gets taken off our vacation time unless we're sick for three consecutive days (with a Dr.'s note). Then day #4 would be sick leave. This said, I wasn't going to punk out on going to work. I have plenty of clerical-type admin work to do, so I figured I would knock that out.
I get to work, and I find that the Interpreter that covers all of my "Baby" units (Labor and Delivery, Mother/Baby, NICU,PICU, Antepartum Testing, Triage, etc) is out sick. What has she got? Same thing I did. Then my 8:30 backup, the one I had been counting on (she is was reliable as allfuck), calls and tells me she thinks her voice is going, so she's not coming in either.

It's my busiest day of the week, I have no voice, no backup, my throat feels like someone is going at it with an electric sander, and apparently I have hit my entire unit with the equivalent of Interpreter Plague. If I could punch my throat hard enough to make it work, I would. Goddamnitalltohell, I hate being sick.

It's really really hot where Pikko works.

I think a bunch of guys already tried. It didn't really work. :(



Damn my non-smiley having account!

Edited, Aug 17th 2006 at 10:23am EDT by Kakar

Reminds me of my wondering how often they hear "rocket science" jokes at NASA.

So are you talking about that new "personal day" **** I've been seeing at some of my job interviews over the last 6 months? Everytime I saw it I thought it was slighty cool for people who don't get sick but pretty lame for people who got sick all the time. Then I realized it was really only just good for the company so they could get rid of sick time and merge it with vacation.

Sorry you're sick again! ;(

The one thing that I can say about my job is that my boss is very flexible when it comes to leave/vacation time. He doesn't count any of my days and he doesn't care if I take a day off when he's gone on vacation. He's gone every Friday so I leave early on Fridays. And every other month or so he'll take an extended weekend vacation so I leave on those days. And every 6 months or so, he goes on a 2 week vacation so I get to take a few days there too.

When I'm sick or one of my kids is sick and I have to stay home, if I'm feeling all right, but don't want to go in and get everyone else sick, I'll remote access my office computer and do what work I can.

I'm going to hate looking for a new job next year. I'll be looking at my new boss and thinking "Whaddya mean I only get 2 weeks of vacation time a year???"

Where would I get that?

Ah. They look like those chewy white mints you get at Japanese restaurants.

Everyone tells me that, and so far the only thing I've found that helps me is Chloraseptic (I love you, you numb bastage) and hot tea with honey and lime.

As much as it is one of the last things on earth you ever want to do to yourself, gargling with salt water is a very good remedy.

You'll only experience intense agony for about 30 seconds...or a minute...

Good luck!

Necro'ing my own post. Only yesterday did I get my voice back full-on, and today I come in to find out that two of my Interpreters are out, with a cough and laryngitis. Turns out that what I had was probably bronchitis, and now I've gone an spread it all over the department.

One of the two Interpreters couldn't get her second dose of Hep Vacc because of it. She was standing in a room during a procedure when she got fluids in the eye.

Oh, and the mice are back. I'll be damned if I can find the thread where someone gave me a link to a cheap mousetrap....

Thanks for the link but I'm in the city. I'd have to contain it and give it to Housekeeping for disposal. It was a black plastic triangle-looking thingy, about $3-4 .....