The Sickness

bike21

9-5 Ruins Lives
Anyone else get this grossness of a cold going around? Been down for over a week and just now feeling a bit human again. Negative for Covid/Flu so just some other nastiness I guess.

My sleep score certainly tells the story, interesting to track metrics during a cold. Resting HR, body temp, HRV all in the crapper too.

Stay healthy out there!

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Seems like it's literally everyone I've encountered in the last 2-3 weeks. I'd just gotten over a mild cold then the nephews got everyone in the family sick and it's hung around a lot longer. Most of the people I've flown with have had some kind of crud in the last month too.
 
Finally felt mostly human yesterday on day 12, even got a couple of laps in on the snowboard. Still not 100% but getting better each day. Sleep score last night of 57 - which is by no means great - but sadly best I've had since this ass kicker of a cold arrived.

That time of year I guess, had a good run of nothing truly nasty but luck runs out I guess.
 
My youngest woke up this am barfing his brains out. Multiple people I know have had it too. In hindsight, I didn't feel very great last week, but I just chalked it up as maybe not getting enough sleep or whatever. I normally don't get fully sick though, so I probably had it too to some extent.

Also made me think. In the last 3 weeks, my little sister in law's ex husband died at age 41 of stomach cancer after about 6 months from diagnosis. And just today, the mom of some girls my boys got to know in the local theater died of ovarian cancer also in her 40's. I think her battle was a similar duration, i.e. very quick. Really my early 40's, now entering mid-40s, has been a sad experience of seemingly everyone around me dropping like flies, far too young.
 
So tangental:
A couple years ago I got COVID twice, and both times I was out for six reserve days before I was testing negative.
Then I started having some symptoms that weren't compatible with flying, including severe fatigue and muscle cramps. I went to the doctor, and he said he could see the symptoms, but bloodwork came back clean except for a very low vitamin D.

That put me on "the radar" to start getting extremely ominous calls from the Chief Pilot's office about my reliability, including the mention of "we need to start talking about next steps," and "You need to get FMLA! You've missed FOUR WEEKS OF WORK!" ... it was extremely uncomfortable, and, as someone who had, to that point, never called in sick when I wasn't sick, extremely frustrating.

The doctor agreed, and wrote FMLA paperwork, and the company rejected my FMLA.

I felt pressured to fly while sick. In fact, I still do—my "reliability" still hasn't recovered.

Do other people just never get sick? Don't get me wrong, I don't get sick a ton, but when I do it tends to go into my lungs (and has since I was a kid) and linger. But when we're on for 18+ days a month, and we have to call out sick for things that an office worker wouldn't need to, is that standard reasonable?

Is the answer just "don't be sick, you •"?
 
(Oh, and I had doctors notes for all of those. I was told "we don't care about doctor notes, they don't mean anything to us")
 
So tangental:
A couple years ago I got COVID twice, and both times I was out for six reserve days before I was testing negative.
Then I started having some symptoms that weren't compatible with flying, including severe fatigue and muscle cramps. I went to the doctor, and he said he could see the symptoms, but bloodwork came back clean except for a very low vitamin D.

That put me on "the radar" to start getting extremely ominous calls from the Chief Pilot's office about my reliability, including the mention of "we need to start talking about next steps," and "You need to get FMLA! You've missed FOUR WEEKS OF WORK!" ... it was extremely uncomfortable, and, as someone who had, to that point, never called in sick when I wasn't sick, extremely frustrating.

The doctor agreed, and wrote FMLA paperwork, and the company rejected my FMLA.

I felt pressured to fly while sick. In fact, I still do—my "reliability" still hasn't recovered.

Do other people just never get sick? Don't get me wrong, I don't get sick a ton, but when I do it tends to go into my lungs (and has since I was a kid) and linger. But when we're on for 18+ days a month, and we have to call out sick for things that an office worker wouldn't need to, is that standard reasonable?

Is the answer just "don't be sick, you •"?

I appreciate that you call in sick when you're actually sick. I'm not really upset about those who use it (Delta Jets have to use it or forfeit it, for example, which makes their "lookback" program so incredibly petty and pointless ), but I too save those hrs for times when I'm actually sick, so I feel ya. That doesn't really answer your question, but I understand why it is frustrating to be of that mentality and then subsequently lumped into the other category the second your health takes a turn.....because of so many others who are either using or abusing the same system.
 
You can put me in the camp of when I get sick I end up with a lingering cough that goes on for weeks. It get frustrating having to tell people that I was sick weeks ago and this just won't go away, especially when you work somewhere with a really generous sick policy and there are still some that will go to work sick.

Sorry for all of those of you that are dealing with this, I hope you all get well soon.
 
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