Are You Sick Enough for a Sick Day?

Here is a test of your recovery: When you have a bad cold or infection or feel the flu coming on can you take a sick day from work?

After years of recovery, twelve-step practice and loads of therapy I still have trouble knowing when I am sick “enough” for a sick day. Now that little word “enough” should be the clue. Isn’t sick all by itself enough? Apparently not for the committee that rules my head some days. I go back and forth about what is malingering and what can be “toughed out” and what is responsible care of others—I hate the contamination of other people’s colds and flu, don’t you? But still…

Yes, of course this is a childhood leftover, and a painful one. Having to be sick “enough” to call in sick is just one appendage to the deeper condition of not feeling good enough. It’s related to perfectionism and to survivor guilt and to a load of other issues. For me there is also a hook to shame—I’m letting people down or maybe it’s my fault because I didn’t eat well enough or I didn’t take my cod liver oil. Or…

I know, I know…

Years ago, a former sponsor told me that her “sick day standard” was to stay home when she needed to be taking any kind of medicine –including over the counter stuff or if she needed to have a box of tissues near her. That made sense. But then she added, “And then you stay home one extra day after the symptoms cease so you can be truly well.”

That last part blew me out of the water—and it still does. I know she is way ahead of me on the self-care scale and she has great recovery evidenced by the rest of her life. I try to think about her when I am lumbering around in pain, sniffling, coughing and in tears still wondering, “Am I sick enough to call in sick?”