Folie A Deux

I mentioned that I took a sick day for the first time ever- there’s a little more to the story. I was actually at work through the worst of my sickness on Monday and Tuesday. It was mostly coughing, but the coughing was pretty violent, to the point where people from two doors down were knocking on the door to my office to offer me a cough drop. But I’ve never taken a sick day, and I could still get out of bed, so I wasn’t about to take one. It’s not just pride and martyrdom. The work doesn’t wait for me if I don’t come in. Someone has to cover for me. I hate that, and other people hate doing it, including me. I have complained about having to cover for sick colleagues. On Wednesday, I was starting to feel a little better when I got an email from the employee health department telling me that I had been exposed to a patient with pertussis about 5 days before I got sick. The testing had just barely come back. My cough was so aggressive that the diagnosis of whooping cough had actually crossed my mind, but I figured I just had a daycare-associated cold. When I talked to the health department, they told me that I had to put on a mask and immediately leave work for 5 days. It’s exquisitely contagious. I was able to talk them into testing me for pertussis- If I had it, Violet was exposed, and she’s in daycare. Pertussis is a bad thing at daycare. So I got some antibiotics, got V some antibiotics, and we holed up for two days while we waited for test results. And… negative. I didn’t have pertussis. I went back to work yesterday afternoon. I’m glad, because we don’t have to organize a scare and immunizations and prophylactic antibiotics for all the unsuspecting, innocent bystanders who were exposed to me and my cough. But I do feel a bit guilty for spending my very first sick day at home with just a cold.