The Judge RANTS!
Date: 30/11/12
One Step Forward, Two-And-A-Half Steps Back
As described here, the middle of this month saw me go down with some sort of lurgy. I spent a week off work, and went back in last Friday. I managed to get through that one day, and thought that the following weekend would see me back to some sort of form.
I then had to phone in and book a day off on Monday because I had had no more than two hours' sleep on Sunday night. This was due more to my blood sugar level dropping too low, leading to my standing in my kitchen at 02:30 on Monday morning shovelling wine gums down my throat (same sugar content as my Glucotabs, but far more interesting taste-wise). It at least gave me the chance later that day to go and do some vital shopping, as I was down to approximately one chicken-and-vegetable pie, half a bag of frozen chips, one rasher of bacon and a pickled onion.
I awoke rather earlier than usual on Tuesday, and was in work for 07:00. I was OK until I got home shortly after two that afternoon and had my customary afternoon nap. When I awoke from that, I felt as bad as I had done a week or more before. I cooked my tea, but ate only about a quarter of it before giving up in disgust. I was in bed by 20:30.
Waking up at my usual hour of 06:15 on Wednesday, I went downstairs to start to make my breakfast. I stared at the bag of muesli and suddenly found my appetite completely vanishing again. I sat here until about 07:40, when I phoned the office to tell my manager that I was ill again. I then went back to bed and stayed there until mid-afternoon. I needed to pick up a repeat prescription from the chemist's at the bottom of the village. It is a measure of how weak I felt that I actually caught the bus down there rather than walk the two hundred yards or so to the pharmacy. And, of course, I caught the bus back.
This is taking a lot longer to get over than I'd expected, and my current problem is that one part of my body is telling me to cough, but the muscles in my right-hand side are pleading with me not to, because I seem to have tweaked them and it hurts when I do.
It's clear to me now that I went back to work far too soon - I was more concerned with not having to get a note from the doctor than I was with how things actually stood. I'm not going to do that again; I'm putting myself resolutely first, and won't go back until I feel genuinely strong enough to do so, however long it takes. I've already reached the stage where my sick-leave is going to be monitored anyway, so it's not going to make a lot of difference in practice.
All the same, I hate it and I wish it would go away.
