Day 43: Doctors again.

Went back to the doctors again this morning. It was the drop-in surgery, which meant sitting and waiting for ages to be seen, but handily I got to see the same doctor as last time, which meant he could confirm that my sicknote was indeed supposed to be until Wednesday

The reason I dropped in was partly that I still had a huge lump on the side of my head that no doctor seemed to have taken any notice of, but which he assures me is nothing to worry about, having now examined it, but also that I was concerned that my little breakdown of yesterday meant that maybe I was pushing myself to go back to work too soon.

As a child, hating school I grew quite good at pleading illness to get out of attending. I could vomit naught but stomach bile if necessary for veracity. As an adult the guilt of that memory makes me very reluctant to use illness to get out of work. Not that I love my job or anything (It could easily be worse, don't get me wrong, by comparison to most available I value it very highly), but I do generally require something quite special to keep me away. Merely feeling unwell, as is the case at present, is not usually enough.

Last year, in the middle of summer, I managed to contract gastric flu. I spent several days evacuating from both ends and the second it stopped I made myself go back to work. Whilst back at work I again felt sick, and ended up vomiting into the toilets at work, and had to take a further few days off. The lesson I learnt from that is it's all very well feeling well at home, where there is nothing to do except laze around on the sofa and watch daytime television, but that is a different level to being at work.

Whilst I feel fine most of the time at home right now and feel guilty for being so, I am concerned that I am far from back to what constitutes normal for me yet. I have visions of going back to work and falling apart on the telephone to a customer the way I fell apart to my manager. And my manager is lovely, if I can't cope with her there is no way I could cope with an awkward customer.

I explained all this to the doctor, who agreed, and signed me off for another week. Given there is a bank holiday weekend that's only another three days off work, so I don't feel too bad about that. I went to work and discussed it with my manager and gave her the new sicknote, who also agreed.

Nothing to do now except relax and try and get from making myself feel better to merely being bored and restless. What a relief.