Faking It

I have been sick quite a bit during the past month. I suffered from sinus infections for a large portion of my adulthood until 2 years ago when I had sinus surgery. Prior to my surgery, I had been getting sinus infections about 6 times a year. Post surgery, it's only been once or twice a year...until recently.

The week between Christmas and New Year is a very popular week to take off work at my company (probably at most people's companies). With Christmas on a Sunday, we had Monday off as a holiday and I used my last vacation day of the year to take that Tuesday off as well. I went into work on Wednesday, suddenly feeling like crap. As I was driving to the train station that morning, I kept thinking about turning around and going home. Sitting in the parking lot before getting on the train, I thought it wasn't too late. On the train, I kept thinking how easy it would be to get off at the next stop and take the next outbound train back to my station. Walking from Union Station to my office...I could still turn around. Miserably sitting at my desk with hardly any work to do, I thought I really should go home and rest. My supervisor was off that week, as was my boss, as well as a few other coworkers. There were just 3 other people there on my team that day which meant not a lot of work was going to be generated for me anyway. I was likely going to spend the next three days sitting at my desk pretending to look busy, wasting company time and money. So why not just go home sick already?

It was because I was afraid that people would think I was faking my illness. Even though I was constantly blowing my nose and sounding congested, I was fearful that everyone would be talking about me behind my back, saying that I was just ditching work. With no vacation or sick days left, going home would mean unpaid days. I was willing to do that. I really wasn't feeling well. Congested and even dizzy from all the swelling in my head. But I was so worried about what everyone else might think of me. Slacker. So I stuck it out most of the day. I finally broke down and called my supervisor at home, explaining that I was sick and that there wasn't much work to do anyway, so I really wouldn't be missed at the office. He said that if I was legitimately sick and willing to take unpaid time, I could go home. So at 2:00 that Wednesday, I went home sick for the next four days.

My initial thought was that it just a common cold. It was the right time of year, and it didn't feel like a sinus infection...and I know what sinus infections feel like. So I just slept a lot and drank a lot of water and took a lot of OTC cold medicine. By the end of the weekend, it occurred to me that my congestion was getting a lot better, but the dizziness wasn't going away. WebMD told me it might be an infection and that, regardless of any other symptoms, dizziness is not something you should ignore.

After the New Year, my doctor's office reopened on Tuesday and I made an appointment for that afternoon, causing a need to leave work a few hours early. Slacker. I was diagnosed with a sinus infection and prescribed antibiotics. But after the medicine was gone, I was still pretty congested. The dizziness had gone away though, so I was blaming my congestion on allergies. It's been weird weather here...10 degrees one day, 48 the next, then back down to 15. It seemed like the right kind of weather for allergies to be in full force.

But after a couple more weeks, that congestion hadn't gone away, and I also started a terrible cough earlier this week. My supervisor was out of the office again on business. When he left Monday afternoon, I was feeling pretty well. But all of a sudden on Tuesday, I was coughing a lot more. A coworker suggested that maybe I was still sick and that if I wasn't better by Friday, to consider going to the doctor again. By that evening I was starting to feel dizzy again.

I woke up Wednesday and called in sick to work. I went back to the doctor, who was surprised that the antibiotics I'd been given a few weeks prior hadn't done the trick. So he did a CT scan to make sure it wasn't something more serious. It was still just a nasty infection. I was given stronger antibiotics for a longer period of time.

Thursday morning, I was still dizzy...called in sick. This morning, I was still dizzy...called in sick again. But even though I am legitimately sick, I'm still afraid that it's going to seem like I'm faking it, just to get a 5-day weekend. It's been freezing cold outside the past few days, and today we are supposed to get up to 6 inches of snow. It just seems easy for my supervisor to jump to the conclusion that if I seemed fine on Monday, how do I all of a sudden have such a terrible infection, seemingly out of nowhere, during a week of horrible weather, and just weeks after I was already treated for this same problem?

Seriously, I know I have no reason to worry. If they don't believe me at work, I can easily provide a doctor's note, since I have been legitimately sick, did in fact go to the doctor, did in fact get a CT scan to confirm my horrible sinus infection, have in fact been feeling dizzy...so I'm covered.

But it still just really seems that when you put the whole story together, it sounds like I'm simply just faking it.