Looking back, the past 1 and a half years, I have been working, rain or shine, in sickness and in health. Why so hardworking, you may ask? Well, because as a house officer with the MOH, you are not entitled to MCs. Any sick leave is subtracted from the precious 10 days leave you get per posting of 4 months duration. Therefore, I’d rather go to work than waste my precious leave calling in sick.
After finally being entitled to MCs since June this year, even when I was semi-sick, I had no idea how to call in sick. Or rather the hassle of getting an MC, calling up the big boss to request a day off just seemed like too much a hassle. So I decided to continue working despite it all.
2 days ago, I started to feel a little under the weather. As any other day, I would just pop 2 pills of Panadol and go to work as usual however come yesterday evening, I felt like a train ran over me. Even after taking the good ol’ Panadol, I still felt sick, and cold. My colleague told me to go and see a doc, at least to verify if i was really sick.
Turned out I was genuinely sick as I recorded 39 degrees on the termometer, which was suprising, coz I hadn’t had high grade fever in ages. I was forced to take blood as the KK doc was worried it could be dengue but I was thinking since it’s only Day 2 of fever, what’s the point of it? Nevertheless, he was so insistent that I had to get my blood taken, so I did, which I so proudly took all by myself. Ok, I’ll admit that I had to have help in tying and releasing the torniquet on my arm.
Anyway, as predicted, my platelets were normal, white cells showed a viral picture, and he gave me an MC for today. Then I had to go through the guilty ordeal of calling my boss to tell her I was too sick to work today. I never liked doing this sort of last minute thingy, and causing her the trouble of finding a replacement for me, but I had no choice. I couldn’t even withstand the coldness of the fan blowing at 1, so I’d figured I wouldn’t be able to last in an OT of which the temperature was set at 18 degrees celcius.
And so I’m officially on my first sick leave…ever…
My first sick leave: I was so sick that I couldnt crawl out of bed. Had no voice to even call Boss I had to sms my friend to call her on my behalf. And hell, taking sick leaves give u the kind of guilt that can never be logically described even though there are no lies to it.
Crap. I think we are WORKAHOLICS.
Damn. I think you’re right. We ARE workaholics. Sigh…
workaholic is not good for us but shopaholic is better…