This morning, I woke up feeling terrible. I had a very bad sore throat and was terribly nauseated. I went ahead and tried to get ready for work, though, but I ended up barfing in the shower. Then I had some other stomach problems. When I looked at my throat, my tonsils were very red, swollen, and covered with white spots. I took my temperature, but it was only low grade - 100.5. Still, I felt bad enough that I called in sick to work. I couldn't get a doctor's appointment today, so I'm going tomorrow.
My tonsils are so swollen that it hurts to even open my mouth and I'm having a hard time making myself understood. I've been IM'ing my husband for juice and stuff all day, so that I don't have to talk.
I had my husband call my work tonight to let them know I'm still ill and won't be coming to work tomorrow. I suppose I should have tried to call myself, but between our horrible cell phone connection (no land line at the house, only cell phones) and how difficult it is for me to speak coherently, I thought it would be easier for him to call. Apparently the charge nurse gave him some grief over me calling in sick 2 days in a row.
Now I'm worried that I'm going to be in trouble.
I don't understand why things like this have to be punitive. We have a point system at my hospital - every time you're ill or have a death in the family or have to miss work for any reason (except pre-approved vacation time) you earn one point. It doesn't matter if you have a doctor's excuse or not; you still earn a point. If you are tardy, you earn half a point. When you accumulate 12 points, you get fired.
And the points don't drop off at the end of the year; rather, they are on a rolling calender. They don't drop off at the beginning of the year when you have your evaluation and get your raise, etc. etc. They drop off exactly a year from whenever the incident occurred. So if for some reason, you had multiple illnesses or family emergencies or whatever back to back within a six month period, you wouldn't be able to call in for any reason until a full calender year had passed from those incidents; otherwise, you'd get fired.
I guess I'm nervous because I've had a very bad year. I had to have an emergency appendectomy last November, so I was out for a week then. Then I had some marital problems (my husband actually left me out of nowhere, though we're back together and working on our problems now) so I missed 2 days for that in January. Then I hurt my back and missed a day in March. And, last September, I missed a day and a half for fertility treatment (obviously prior to the marital problems. :)). Those are all things I couldn't really plan and get pre-approval for.
I just feel like in the face of such a nursing shortage, it seems counter-productive to make things like illness and emergencies so punitive and threatening. I could see that if someone was calling in sick for a day here and a day there once a month or once every couple of weeks or was always calling in with vague complaints. But, I had legitimate problems along with letters from my doctor and therapist for everything except my back problem.
Do you all think I'm in serious trouble here? should I have gone to work anyways? I truly feel terrible - I'm only on line because I can't sleep because I feel so bad. And, additionally, I'm anxious about my job, so that's not helping.
