In sickness and in health

I had my first bought of illness this week with a low-grade fever after my class on Tuesday. I crashed and slept for over 9 hours and dragged myself into work on Wednesday just because I had some practicum taping lined up and another class in the evening. PhD program- you are keeping me going when I otherwise may have taken a sick day! This obviously is not always a positive, but my fever was low grade and luckily counseling means sitting down:) Unfortunately by Wednesday night it had gone up and I was not feeling any better, so I decided to let myself sleep in today (Thursday) to see if I felt better (I slept 12 hours!). Long story short, I am ending up having to take a partial sick day on Thursday before crashing hard after work and sleeping another 10+ hours. Ekkkk! This whole situation brought up many thoughts for me....

I very rarely get sick. I have only taken one sick day for ACTUAL sickness since I began working as a counselor (this is not counting my internship experience where I got the stomach flu TWICE in three months- thank you elementary school students. It is even harder to let yourself take time off when you have 600 hours to complete!). It is very funny/odd/concerning that we do not like to take days when we probably need to the most and instead save them for planned appointments or trips (I hate how in my county they distinguish between sick and annual days...just let us have PTO! It discriminates against those of us without kids!). Especially now also as a student, that feeling of always thinking you should be doing something is daunting. I am guilty of this, and since I rarely get sick I should really take notice when I do, but the fast-paced lives we lead often make a day of rest (unless planned!) difficult to take. Luckily I was able to make it through work Friday, and enjoyed another long night of sleep Friday night. Though I didn't get to go out of town this weekend like I had planned, I am glad to be resting and getting back to my normal self (and runs in this beautiful weather) today. I really hate how out of it you feel when you are battling an illness. I feel like I was in a fog much of the week, off at work, and slept so much that I don't know what happened! Luckily, my lovely friend is letting me visit her next weekend instead:)

Do you all take sick days when you actually are sick?!