Doc-wife on sick call

Doc-wife called in sick today.

She awoke at 1:30 a.m. with nausea, spent the next 3 ½ hours in the bathroom and finally decided that enough was enough…she made THE CALL to work. I’m sure “shocked and stunned” was the only way to describe her employer’s reaction.

See, Doc-wife DOES NOT call in sick. Ever. She has worked shifts immediately after breaking her hand in several places, face-planting in the dirt after getting bucked off a horse and spraining her knee playing volleyball. She also had to leave a shift early once, but only because she was immediately taken into surgery for a fallopian tumor. She has worked through countless bouts with migraines and the accompanying nausea.

Ironman? Pshaw! Titanium is more like it. Maybe even the elusive “unobtainium (anyone else see ‘The Core?’)”

I’m sure the accusations of “short-timers syndrome” are flying around her work…mentally if not verbally…because she will change jobs at the end of March. Though there is a little truth in that thought, it would be more accurate to say that she is tired of working through illnesses which bring other people to the hospital. She should not have to work with a broken hand/severe abdominal pain/bruised and stitched face…she should have the option to have someone else pinch-hit for her in an emergency. Up to this point, she’s felt like the little Dutch girl with her finger in the dike…she can’t leave or the whole world will come crashing down. She had no backup and was on her own in the battle against all the world’s ills.

So she couldn’t work today…her employers found a solution to staff the department…life goes on. She found out she can, at times, be human and the world will not end.

At least not today.