I felt a little off at work on Monday, and it continued to go downhill as the night progressed. By the end I was shivering, and zapped of all my energy. I drove home and thrashed around in bed for a few hours, never really getting into a deep sleep. And I was cold, cold no matter what.
The next morning I woke from my night of mattress-tumbling, and felt like I’d gone a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson. I ached all over, even my eyeballs.
I sent a text message to work, telling them I wouldn’t be in. I mean, there was no way. I could barely muster enough energy to walk across the room and grab a blanket. The idea of taking a shower, shaving, putting on pants, etc. seemed WAY beyond my abilities.
And so, I sat in a living room chair for hours on end, kinda drifting in and out of consciousness. Nothing interested me, not even watching TV. I didn’t turn it on until late in the afternoon, and watched multiple episodes of Property Virgins, never staying awake long enough to see any one episode in its entirety.
I felt like pure, undiluted shit. I didn’t want to eat, was sleepy but couldn’t sleep, and had zero energy. I’m not sure what had taken hold of me, but definitely don’t recommend it.
That night there was a swim meet, which I did not attend. But Toney didn’t get home until about 8 o’clock, and asked if I minded if we just had Subway for dinner. I wasn’t sure I could eat anything, but told her it was fine by me.
And it tasted really weird. I think the inside of my mouth was in an uproar. Everything was odd. God knows I know what Subway tastes like, and this wasn’t it. I struggled through half of the sandwich, and put the rest in the fridge. Then I returned to my chair, and shivered ‘neath a blanket for a few more hours.
I eventually tapped some inner reserve, and went to bed. Toney refused to join me, because of the previous night’s antics, and it was not good. Sleep wouldn’t take again. I’d drift off, and jerk awake ten minutes later. Over and over and over. I couldn’t get comfortable or warm, and it sucked.
Yesterday morning I didn’t feel much better, and sent another text message. I felt guilty, but simply couldn’t do it.
Wednesday turned out to be better than Tuesday, though. I had some coffee in the morning, took a shower, and ate the rest of that Subway sandwich. And it tasted normal. So, things were moving in the right direction. I still had a ways to go, but at least I was making progress.
I went downstairs and turned on Netflix, and watched a ton of stuff. I saw Jack Reacher, with Tom Cruise. It’s full of explosions, gunfire, and ass-kicking, and was reasonably entertaining. Then I saw an indie film called Safety Not Guaranteed. It was quirky, and I liked it. There were quite a few laughs and pleasing characters. And did I mention that it was quirky?
After that I watched five or six episodes of Orange is the New Black, which is pretty great. So, it was many hours of sitting in front of the TV. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve done that. I never watch TV.
But I was in a funk. I can see how people with ongoing health issues could succumb to depression. I was only two days in, and already feeling it. I kinda liked turning my brain off, and watching all that Netflix stuff, but there was a dark cloud over me, all day.
Today I feel only slightly better, but am returning to work. I need to rejoin society. It’s going to be a long ten hours, but I have to get back in there. I don’t think I could handle another day of wallowing in illness.
I look like a street person, but hopefully can make myself semi-presentable before leaving the house. And I’m dragging massive ass. I wish I could sleep. Why can’t I sleep?!
I hate to say this, since I was recently mocking people for saying they have the flu all the time, but this thing was very flu-like. I’m on the mend after only a few days though, which makes me skeptical. Maybe it was something else? Regardless, it’s not pleasant. This is the sickest I’ve been in a long time.
What’s the most work or school you’ve ever missed? How many days in a row? And why? I only missed two this time, and think I missed 10 or more during my bout with honest-to-God flu in Atlanta years ago. I realize I’ve been fortunate, and am thankful for that fact. What about you? Please tell us about it in the comments section below.
And I’ll see you guys again tomorrow, I hope.
Have a great day!
Now playing in the bunker
Treat yourself to something cool at Amazon!
I missed the better part of a week for a shredded back. It hurt so much that the first day I just stayed on the living room floor where “d initially collapsed. The dog was puzzled at first, but then said fuggit and settled down beside me. I’d have loved some of those good drugs i hear about, but how do you get to the doctor when you can’t even put your shoes on?
See what happens when you mock the Flu Gods? It is a good thing you did not rip on the Genital Warts Gods. I am glad you are on the mend. I had that crap back in October and it took six weeks for my lungs to fully clear out.
Sounds like the flu to me. The most I missed was about 7 days, 2 summers ago I had pneumonia. I felt like I got hit by a train. On and off fever, chills. Chest would crackle when I would breathe, not fun.
Back when I was 21, I broke my foot playing softball. I worked in the home improvement industry at the time. I was able to do all the partying etc. a 21 year old could do in 1976, just needed two functioning feet to do my job. Was off for 4 weeks.
Like TR, I had pneumonia about 10 years ago. Missed the better part of 2 weeks. Felt like I broke a rib from all the coughing
I lost 3 months with the spinal surgery (of which I believe you have a rather dim shot of the incision).
Besides that, I’m guessing 4 days with the nastiest flu I’ve had since grade school after moving to Italy. I was IN BED for 4 days. No TV. No Internet. Nothing. Miserable. Evidently the Italian bugs are different than US and my body didn’t care for it – didn’t care for it one bit.
Haven’t been sick since. Hope you’re feeling better soon, Jeff!
Did you take a flu jab this winter? The flu doesn’t tend to last as long if you get the jab, and still come down with it. At least that is what the public health folks insist. They say that H1N1 is spreading prolifically in the US this winter. I’m going to venture a guess that is what you are dealing with. Lucky for you it apparently only kills Mexicans (look back to 2009). I had the full-on flu only once in my life before, and missed probably a week and a half of my normal life. I thought I was going to die. I have been getting the flu shot every year ever since. I suppose if Reverend Jones gave me a dixie cup full of kool aid I’d drink that too. A sheep aspiring to be a grasshopper.
I just had pneumonia three weeks ago. I only ended up missing one day of work for it (due to holiday break), but I was near-death sick for about four days. I started feeling sick on December 19th… joint pain, general weakness, and a really high fever. I assumed it was the flu, so I just rested and drank tons of fluids.
I was in really rough shape though… I was drinking roughly a gallon of water every day, and another gallon of Gatorade on top of that. But I STILL felt dehydrated. And I had absolutely no energy. There were only about 30 minutes each day when I wasn’t either lying in bed or lying on the couch. And my body temperature was through the roof! Even Advil and Tylenol wouldn’t put a dent in it. It was always up around 102 or 103.
Finally on the 23rd I went to the ER. They ran a flu test and said it wasn’t the flu. Then they did a chest x-ray and said I had horrible pneumonia… pretty remarkable, for someone who’s 33 and doesn’t smoke and is otherwise healthy. The doctor was impressed that I lasted four days before I finally went to the ER.
Anyways, at that point they gave me a ton of IV saline and antibiotics. Within four hours, I felt amazing. It was crazy how much better I felt!
If it hadn’t happened over a weekend and while I had Christmas break, I bet I would have missed an entire week from that pneumonia. It was awful.
P.S. At least it gave me an excuse to skip my flight up to NJ to see family for Christmas… I was able to just relax here in Atlanta.
Yeah, that’s what happened to me. I was at work and I was sweating like a pig, I had a cool towel around my neck and head, I couldn’t move. For a few days after, my fever would go up and down, couldn’t breathe right. I felt like I was getting a little better than I would hit the wall again. Finally got to the doc and they did the x-ray and told me I had pneumonia.
I missed 8-weeks of work with double pneumonia. The problem was that I was on an HMO. At the time, the doctors got a bonus for not sending patients on to specialists. I was sent home from the doctor’s office 3 or 4 times with “a cold” before I finally went to see a different doctor.
I deal with MD’s very differently these days.
Oh yeah.. my ex wife has missed 25 years of work because she’s a lazy bitch.
that’s absolutely hilarious!!
I work with a guy that missed four days of work because of constipation. Of course I made fun of him when he returned. He said it isn’t funny Tim, I had to give myself an enema.
And another guy got fired because he went home early one day because of a family emergency. And then called in the following day and explained the family emergency was that his dog was dying. And he wouldn’t be in again, because he needed to take both of his dogs to the vet.
Because the healthy dog was going to give the sick dog a blood transfusion, in a desperate bid to save it. But it didn’t work, the dog died, and he was fired.
Awww he shouldn’t have been fired. That’s a legit excuse. I would do the same for my dog.
Somewhere there is a vet laughing all the way to the bank. And with this guy, probably an animal mortician too. Or perhaps a taxidermist.
I have a dog-crazy friend that had his dog cremated (after it died, of course). When they brought out the dog’s ashes in a cardboard container, he said “No.No.No. That’s not my dog. He wasn’t a Boxer”!
7 weeks when I broke my shoulder in a horse back riding accident. That’s when I was with a small ad agency. When I did finally return, the boss goes and embraces me in a huge bear hug that damn near broke my shoulder all over again.
Oh and 7days when I had knee surgery for a torn meniscus. Somebody from my office called me the day after the surgery “to check up on how I was doing” and I was still loopy from the anesthesia and had no idea who I was talking to. She was just a co-worker – not a supervisor or manager and I was pissed off she took it upon herself to call me at home.
I missed about 4 months of work after accidently shooting myself in the leg this February and shattering my femur.. I then developed a blood clot that required 3 surgeries to address. Wallowed a deep spot in my recliner before finally being able to return to work with a helluva limp….
I forgot…. Yes, I am an idiot!
Plaxico? Is that you?
Is it just me, or does Plaxico sound like the name of a pharmaceuticals company?
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It is not just you. Although I think it sounds like a window manufacturer.
Two weeks missed due to an obstructed bowel.
I had the flu shot this November yet still came down with it last weekend. Chills then burning up on and off for days plus my body feeling like I went 15 rounds with Tyson in his prime. I finally slept last night for seven hours and woke up this morning feeling slightly normal just in time to return to work tomorrow night.
We had subway last night and it took all of my strength to drive there. I even typed up the order and printed it, thinking I could just hand them the orders so I wouldn’t have to talk, but then thought they shouldn’t accept it because I’m sick, and taking pieces of paper from sick people is gross. If they would have taken it, I would have been worried about other health code violations. I then thought I wish I could just go to anywhere else with a drive thru because getting out of the car and ordering was too much to bear. But then retaking the orders? Eeeh. My husband brought something home Friday and we (him, me, 2 kids) have been sick sick SICK.
That’s one of the reasons I hate working in a large company in a cavernous building. You never know what snot head touched the elevator buttons, bannisters, door knobs etc. At least in a small company, you can detect the ill and keep your distance.
Missed about a year or so a few years back. Went to see my doctor about what I thought was a sinus infection a couple of days before Christmas. Turned out to be a big ass tumor in my sinus cavity. 6 months chemo and radiation and about another 6 to recover. Boy, that sucked! Dropped about 75 lbs. though so that’s good. All good now!
75 pounds – that was one big ass tumor 😉 Just kidding glad you’re good now.
A week when I had foot surgery. Maybe 3 at most from being sick.
I avoid the flu shot at all costs. Don’t trust it one bit. Read too many stories about people being struck down with odd and horrifying side effects like narcolepsy, epilepsy, blindness, and numb limbs.
No thanks…
…not to mention faking a British accent as a side-effect of having a flu shot…..
This is some seriously disturbing and funny stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwlRwGQl5x4
I was watching Diane Sawyer (whatever the hell that show is called – ABC World News?) and there was a segment on avoiding the flu. They said that hand shaking makes the most contact so resort to high fiving or… fist bumping. Yeah, walk into the interview and “fist bump” the potential employer. Meet a dignitary by high fiving… jesus.
I had something like you describe three times, each time coinciding with having gotten a flu shot. Never got a flu shot after that third strike and never got laid up again like it. Only missed one day of work becuase of it, hit me on a friday and I got to suffer through the weekend with it.
Most I’ve missed due to me being ill is two days. I was away from work for about 9 days last year when my mum went into the hospital. Went in for maybe 10 minutes a couple times and the bossman tells me to gtfoutta here and be where I need to be. Yes, there are some human(e) bosses out there. None of those days showed up on my sick/absence records either, which was a pleasant bonus to see considering how anal corporate is about keeping track of that type of thing.
Longest I’ve missed is the two weeks of school I missed when I had chicken pox at age 9. Those little bastards suck.
Longest I’ve ever been sick is the six weeks I had walking pneumonia. Took me a month to figure out it wasn’t just a cold that wasn’t going away and go to the doctor. I only called in a few times during the whole ordeal. I am very stupid.
I was down with something like that for about 10 days in October, although without the fever. “Luckily” most of it was vacation time already. Oh, the humanity.
Re: flu shots, I have not found any correlation between (not) getting a shot and (not) getting sick. Some years I get the shot, some years I don’t. And I’ll get sick or not, with no particular relation between the two.
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Missed two weeks of work with pneumonia. I was so weak I couldn’t get out of bed. I slept so much I thought I’d come out of it with bed sores. There was mention that I needed to bring a doctor’s note to justify being off for so long. I did not heed the order and got paid anyway. I honestly have never been so sick or felt any worse than I did those two weeks. From reading the comments in this thread, pneumonia is responsible for more work days lost than just about anything.
In 11 years at my current job I called in sick twice, for one day each. Freezing cold chills and general shitty feeling. I never get a flu shot. In the 1975 swine flu epidemic I was stationed in Northern Virginia in the Army. They ordered us to get a flu shot, but I resisted. The company commander threatened to court marshal me, but I suspect now that it was an empty threat. As a 19 year old E-4 I didn’t know that. I never did get the shot, and out of 50 or so people in headquarters company I was the only one who didn’t get sick. I told my doctor this year that the flu shot is how the government tracks you by satellite. She never brought it up again.
I’ve never had a flu shot either.
I’ve always wondered if aluminum foil made an adequate hat lining material. It makes a fine Faraday cage, but being non-ferrous, it’s not really a proper magnetic shielding material. You probably need a tight steel mesh to be on the safe side. Add a layer of lead too, if you like that sort of thing.
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https://web.archive.org/web/20080701084653/http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/
If the black helicopters are what you are trying to avoid, no, it won’t help you at all… it’ll help… them.
I use to be invincible in my 20s, now in my late 40s I am not. I have had wrist problems, heart problems, bad ear infections, etc. I had to miss a lot of days over those things.
Where I work you have to have an excuse from a doctor after 5 missed days. That is what they came up with to keep people from abusing their sick days.
Even then – you get shit one way or another.
Paper work keeps everything good though.
I missed about two-three weeks of work with pneumonia/heart failure. I had to keep calling in because I nauseous and it wouldn’t look good for the night secretary to be puking whilst answering the phones (there was also the fact that I was coughing up blood). Luckily, I got sick right at Christmas Break, so I could be at home dealing with the wond’rous side effects of heart medicine (ahh..sudden onset diarrhea!)
A couple of years ago, I had surgery and had to miss a couple of weeks of work. I came back, worked 4 days, and then got the flu. I ended up working about 6 days out of that month. Because we work with newborns, I had to stay out until there was zero chance of me passing it along. Even after I began to feel a little better I was told to stay home until my doctor gave me permission to come back. And I had a flu shot that year.
About a week and a half with influenza once (get flu shots now).
The worst was over two weeks with pneumonia in my early 20’s. Let’s sing the praises of penicillin – my temp went from 105 to 97 overnight and I could actually stand on my own.
I don’t get sick often but when I do, I don’t kid around.
from what I understand my whole town is coming down with a virus that presents flu like symptoms but isnt flu. My daughter got it before Tgiving and then followed that up with tonsillitis. Knock on wood I’m healthy.
Missed three weeks back in ’95 for ACL reconstructive surgery and a week two years ago for a splenectomy. Once missed a week with pneumonia. Other than that been pretty healthy but I’m sure my turn will come.
Off 10 days in a row for spinal meningitis. I worked for about a month with it before getting treated. Luckily it wasn’t the contageous kind. Not much fun.