(sic)

The ironic thing about working in the hospital is that you're not allowed to be sick. I don't think I've called in sick to work once since I started medical school, and that was more than ten years ago. I missed work on the two occasions that I gave birth, of course, and last year I took a "personal day" to be with Joe was hospitalized in the ICU with myocarditis, but in terms of actual sickness, for me myself--nope. One gets the general impression that it's not really allowed. It's one thing if you need surgery or something, and being hospitalized probably would preclude you from being on the job, but when it comes to normal people sick, well, people in medicine just don't do that.

Luckily (and I know I must be jinxing myself here, but just pretend you didn't hear me say this) I have the immune system of some sort of oxen species, which I attribute to several months working the the Peds ER in my twenties and, at present, living in a house with two kids who more often than not aim all coughs for my face. So I don't really get sick for the most part, and even when I do catch something, it's nothing major that would prevent me from being able to do my job safely. (Luckily, I work in the OR almost 100% of the time, so wearing a mask at work is sort of part and parcel of my everyday routine regardless.) Still, I find it somewhat ironic that, working in the healthcare profession, the general consensus levied towards people who call in sick is somewhere between disbelief and automatic assumption of some sort of weakness in morale. Or more often, doctors themselves will just completely deny that they are sick at all, pushing themselves until they are sweaty and shaking and having weird fever dreams while trembling in a corner somewhere. Sick? Who gets sick around here?

Anyway, I'm not sick. Just sometimes I think of these things. You know, ironic things.