Bronchitis

Last week, I came home from work with what can only be described as the onslaught of Death of the Chest. I could feel the fever emerging due to the amount of sweat pouring off my forehead and down my neck, yet was freezing cold with the shivers. My cough went from infancy to adolescence in about an hour and it was becoming very apparent that I was about to battle bronchitis. As much as I wanted to take off the following day, I knew I couldn't because it was the day before President's weekend and I didn't want to make myself look as if I wanted a five day weekend. Instead, I drugged myself with some NyQuil and went to bed.

The next morning I drug myself out of bed and took some more cold medicine and headed to work. Honestly, I'm not sure how I made it through the day. At the first opportunity, I called my doctor's office and made an appointment for later that night. I came home after work and took a nap, well at least laid down for a couple of hours before the appointment. At the appointment, the doctor prescribes me a Z-Pac and a cough medicine.

For the next 36-40 hours, I have a consistent fever that's over 100 degrees and can't seem to get myself out of bed. By Saturday night, I'm beginning to feel much better but now Rachel is sick. She's developing the Earthquake cough and has a fever that's already over 101 degrees. Within a few hours, she goes from feeling "a little under the weather" to having my nasty-ass bronchitis. She calls her doctor's office emergency number (since the office at this point is closed until Monday) and a doctor calls her back and tells her to get lots of rest.

Rachel has asked politely that I don't mention the name of the company, but I do have permission to attempt to explain the point system at her job. She has 6 call out points and when she reaches the maximum number she is automatically fired. They don't care if you have a death in the family, have a doctor's note, were in the hospital, etc. If you call out you get points. Some days are worth more than others.

• Friday to Monday is worth 1.5 points if you call out 4 hours before your shift or 2 points if you call out less than 4 hours before your shift.
• Tuesday to Thursday is worth 1 point.
• If you call out the day before or the day after your day off then you get more points.

Basically the system means that if Employee A and Employee B both come down with the same illness and Employee A calls out on Monday and Employee B calls out on Tuesday, then Employee A is punished more. 

Of course this means, that everyone comes to work whether they are sick or healthy, spreading their germs around as if they were baby rabbits. Even after the doctor has told Rachel to take the day off and having a 101 degree fever, Rachel continues to debate whether to call out or not. She finally (and reluctantly) agrees to calling out. Throughout the day on Sunday, she doesn't get out of bed. Rachel is not one to spend an entire day in bed, even on a lazy Sunday. Even at her "laziest" she moves to another room to watch television.

As we're about to go to bed on Sunday, Rachel once again becomes plagued with the dreaded dilemma of taking another day off. Her fever hasn't gone down and is showing no signs of letting up, she's got no color in her face, and barely had an appetite during the day, yet is seriously debating on whether or not to take the points and call out two days in a row. Instead of making an immediate decision, she falls asleep.

At 3:30 in the morning, I hear her get up to use the bathroom. Moments later, she starts screaming for me that she's not sure whether she was going to puke or pass out. I head to the bathroom to find her laying on the bathroom floor with her sweatshirt balled up under her head. I was relieved that she had the sense to lay down on the floor instead of passing out on her way to the bedroom. Moments after I sat down next to her, she decides she's ready to head back to the bedroom. We start to head to the bedroom when I see her fainting in slow motion.

I attempt to catch her, but fail miserably. She goes down hard on her ankle but luckily fails to hit her head on anything. I keep trying to get her to respond but she's not having it. The only thing she's managing to say is "No ambulance" and "I need water." After chugging a bottle of water, she looks me in the face and with a dead serious look on her face asks if I can drive her to work because she's not going to be able to drive her car with her mangled foot. I had to laugh, which made her laugh at the absurdity of this question. Instead of driving her to work, I convince her that if she doesn't call out I was going to do it for her.

Instead of going to the hospital that night, we set our alarms for 8, so that Rachel can call her doctor as soon as they open. Of course, her doctor's office is short staffed and gives her the run-around. There are only two doctor's on duty so she has to leave a message with the nurse, who will then see if her illness is serious enough  to fit an appointment in. After waiting two hours for the nurse to call back at 11, she tells Rachel that the doctor would like to see her and that the office will call back when there is an appointment available.

At 1, the doctor's office finally calls her back to tell her to head to the emergency room since she fainted in the hallway. Seriously! You couldn't have told us this information when we called this morning. For the next five hours, we sit in the hospital as she gets an EKG, X-Rays on her foot, ankle, and chest, a CAT scan to make sure are no whiskers growing under her skin, a blood-sugar test, a pregnancy test, a vision test, a hearing test, her temperature taken, and her skin prodded and poked. I lied about the pregnancy test, but they did make her pee in a cup so I'm sure they checked for babies. I would actually be shocked if they didn't check for babies.

Rachel wound up with a sprained ankle (the knot on her foot is the size of a small cantelope) and a nasty upper respiratory infection aka the dreaded bronchitis. The ankle has a lovely splint and a pair of fancy crutches to accessorize the splint with. Of course for me it means I'm now responsible for day to day upkeep of our home (laundry, dishes, vacuuming, feeding the cats, taking out the garbage, cleaning the chain mail room, checking the mail, making the bed, feeding the cats more food, changing the litter boxes, planting flowers, alphabetizing the types of pasta in the house, carrying the groceries into the house, eating all of the rice and beans, and of course cleaning the spare chain mail). Additionally, Rachel cannot drive her car seeing that it's a stick shift and requires two feet. I do not have the capability of driving her car due to a lack of knowledge of sticks in general, therefore we have one car for two people and three cats.

The trip to the hospital is a blog in itself...