sick day

I do not have the type of job that affords me the luxury of a sick day. Yet, here I am at home using the first sick day in 2 years. Actually, the last time I used any sick time was when I was in the hospital to have my gallbladder removed and before that I think I went home early once after I vomited at work. The worst part about being sick is the guilt of it all. Yesterday I found myself crying in my office because I really needed to not be at work, but I felt bad about leaving and going home sick. I was also slightly afraid to call my boss and let her know.

The sickness started about a week ago with a mild sore throat. I thought I could just take some cough drops and move on. Well, my sore throat got so bad that I found myself popping Ibuprofen like they were candy and barely able to run my store because I was experiencing the worst sore throat ever. I went online to Web MD and it sounded like I might have strep. Fantastic. Just what I needed right now. There was no way I could take time off to get better, my store is already down a manager and today is a big product launch. So I pushed on and sweated (literally) it out. I went from work to my bed for 3 days and finally my body and nerves just couldn't take it anymore. So, I left work early yesterday and went to the Minute Clinic. Turns out it is most likely not strep (still waiting for some more test results) but I am very sick.

The nurse told me to go home and get a lot of rest. Did this mean that I shouldn't go to work the next day? She said that I just needed to rest and curl up on the couch with some movies. She also told me that all the stress of my job was not making me better. I almost laughed in her face. I told her I was scheduled to work the next day and she said I should stay home. The guilt kicked back in. She actually wrote me a note excusing me from work. I contacted my boss letting her know I needed to be off and she just sends me one icy cold reply: ok. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Not a 'feel better' or 'don't worry the store will be okay'. This was not good.

This is the point I've gotten to with my job. I'm miserable and stressed out beyond belief, but feel that I have no options for making this better. I want to be able to take a sick day every now and then and not have it stress me out more because of all the work I'm going to have to catch up on or the fact that I'm adding stress to my management team. I give 110% when I'm at work and when I can only give 50% I feel like I'm failing. I'm unhealthy, have a weakened immune system and my home (it's a disaster) and social life are suffering. I'm just not sure that I see a light at the end of this tunnel. Just like there is not crying in baseball, there are certainly no sick days in retail.