The pestilence has returned. I thought rather naively that I would be immune to a second bout of this accursed condition but I am now riding it out for an encore performance. Once again microbes have usurped or perhaps deceived the apathetic antibodies that swirl through the arteries of my inner being. The torture of getting sick is not the sickness but the moral dichotomy that comes with it. Extra baggage that reinforces my conviction that I am but a mere slave in the wheels of this machine. Maybe it is just my cynical eye that forces me to view the place I find myself in, in the super organism of humanity as less than flattering. But what other option do I have when the first thing that happens when I become ill is to have to decide if I am sick enough to have a day off from work.

I want nothing more than to stay home tomorrow and lay in bed and hope that this bug will be duped into believing that I am not a worthy host, however because I only just had a three day sick leave binge the other week I am now faced with the question of soldiering on like the Codral ad says we ought to do. This moral dilemma is a constant cause for anxiety in times of illness and in my arrogant mind I can’t see any reason why I shouldn’t expend my sick leave when I’m sick but there also is this sort of shame in doing so. Maybe the dilemma is a dysfunction in me but the feeling that taking leave is unacceptable behaviour and one that only the weak partake in is not without at least some foundation. Case in point being a colleague commenting in a humorous way that women are much stronger and can work when they are sick when I returned to work from my last bout of sickness. Don’t get me wrong, I do have a sense of humor and get that the comment was said in jest but jokes can disguise half truths and in my paranoia I could also imagine that by having leave I was somehow not strong or of weak character or some other blight on my personality.

However, after all is said and done, I’m sitting here writing this blog post and one has to wonder how sick I really am? Well it’s a question I’m struggling with but I think if I had the option of a guilt free exit from work today I would’ve taken it. I still have the option to take a sickie tomorrow but without a doubt it won’t be entirely free of guilt if I do. Am I free? or am I slave? Maybe the question is do I have the courage to be free or will I be enslaved and imprisoned by my mind’s eye?