To ring in sick?

[Sunflowersok]

This is a total woe is me sitch.

I’ve felt like s*e for over two weeks now, it started off as a weird chesty virus thing and then last week my throat started and we were all convinced I had tonsillitis.

Went to the GP, I had a temp and very sore and swollen and pustule tonsils but they diagnosed with a virus that ‘affected the tonsils’ so no antibiotics were given.

My throat feels like I’ve swallowed glass, my ears are killing me and I’ve had to ramp up the painkillers to higher strength ibuprofen and cocodamol and difflam. I’ve been in bed most of the weekend wiped out.

I haven’t been the brightest spark when it comes to sick leave, in sick months I’ve had two days marked down - both times in the space of a week one due to migraine and one due to wisdom teeth pain where I attempted to come in and left around 11 each time. I realised after that it was the same issue and the migraine was triggered by the teeth. I should have taken the week and let myself recover but I’ve been drilled in to me that you ‘work until you physically can’t’ and now I feel daft because if I take anymore sick leave I’ll hit my ‘3 strikes in 6
Months and I’ll be pulled up about it’.

Wwud in this situation? I’m tempted to give myself another three days to a week at least to rest and recover and suffer the consequences later but for some reason dreading ringing up tomorrow and saying I’m sick.

I supervise two staff and one is on AL at the moment, my manager hates one person being in the office on their own.

You need to go back to the doctor, two weeks is a long time to feel unwell with the same illness and it’s moved into your ears now so it sounds like it’s getting worse, not better.

Totally reasonable to take more time off, but you need to be proactive in going back to the doctor now that your symptoms have progressed.

Oh yeah sorry, let me just clarify that I went back to the doctors on Friday because of the escalating symptoms. They reassured me it was viral and lingering and to go back if anything gets worse

And up to now the full two weeks, I haven’t taken any time off work!

@Sunflowersok I feel for you OP and we have the same at my work. It’s better to take a whole week off at once than to have a couple of odd days here and there as you hit a trigger if you do the latter.

But you sound really poorly. Do you have the relationship with your manager where you could just be honest with how you feel and how worried you are and maybe they could let you work from home for a few days so you can at least keep warm and not have to worry about the commute (if you have a long commute!)

That being said if the GP hasn’t told you to stay off work then they clearly don’t think it will be dangerous for you to go into work - you’ll just feel really crap

At the end of the day I think you always know when you’re actually too ill to work and if you think you could actually work then you probably should still go in. I don’t know how much better you are likely to get being at home vs. work really - could you maybe just agree to go in later so you can sleep more?

3 strikes and you’re pulled up, so let them pull you up.

You can’t help being ill, OP. These things happen.

Rest and focus on your health.

I work in a place with the same kind of sick policy and a few years ago had a run of bad luck health wise. I’ve worked in places previously that didn’t pay sick pay so am pretty well trained to only take time off if I need it and I’m happy to justify myself if I need to.

‘Being pulled up’ isn’t anything to be worried about, particularly if you work in a large enough organisation to have a HR department and occupational health, and your reasons for absence are reasonable and true. Of course there is another dimension to consider if you’ve been there less than two years and have reason to believe the organisation would find it easy (and cheap) to replace you quickly.

Trust yourself, your ethics and the fact that you’re an adult. Viruses can be nasty and if you don’t let yourself have adequate time now you risk triggering a whole host of other issues. If they want to pull a face let them.