Sick Day?

If you’ve seen my Facebook and/or Twitter statuses, you’ve likely surmised that I’m home today with my kid.  He’d been throwing up a bit during the morning, but he’s feeling better now. We’re taking it easy today — playing games, watching TV, and some binge drinking reading a little later. My morning has involved some intense laundry and carpet cleanup.  Fun.

Throwing up, however, was probably the best thing to happen to his digestive system at the time.  It’s nasty and gross, but sometimes it’s simply a necessity to purge “the bad stuff” from one’s system. He felt much better after it happened. (Until he threw up again. And then he felt better. Again.) No fever.  No lethargy.  We probably could have sent him to school today.  It’s a place where all of his friends are. It’s after a long weekend. And he looks forward to P.E. on Tuesdays.

But he didn’t go to school today. We adhered to school policy: since he threw up, he stays at home for at least a day. And he stays home until he has recovered.  This is certainly not the easy way out for us: I’m taking personal leave from school as I spend the day with him.  And it’s not like I can run errands while he recovers.  But hey – rules are rules. He stays home.

It was on my mind when I read this story in today’s Washington Post.  It’s a piece which appears every year in most newspapers — a light-hearted, feel-good story congratulating one or a few students who have gone through thirteen years from kindergarten through twelfth grade without being marked absent. Kind of like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in reverse.

Don’t get me wrong — I think it’s a nice sentiment. And I’m all for people attending school as much as possible. But there was something in the article which made me wonder if some people take this a bit too far:

Austin, 18, thinks he knows the moment he decided nothing would keep him from school. It was about fifth grade, the night before a standardized test. “I was puking buckets, and my Mom asked, ‘Do you want to stay home?’ And I said, ‘No, I’ve got to go to school, I’ve got to take the test.’ ”

First and foremost:  there seems to be a natural inclination to associate vomit with “buckets.” So much so that I become nauseated by the word “buckets” alone. Why not move to a more classy word to describe the magnitude of scale of blowing chunks?  “I was spewing plastic souvenir beer cups” could be a suitable alternative.

But it’s the whole notion of someone really that sick — I mean puking buckets — deciding that school is more important than recovering from being sick which gives me a touch of indigestion.

Furthermore, it’s the parents of these kids who don’t step in and realize that letting their kids go to school under such circumstances would be irresponsible not only to their own offspring but also to the kids of other parents who stir up the bile into my esophagus.

I mean — puking buckets! What the hell are they thinking? Does one let her son go to school simply because he wants to? Because discouraging what is perceived as such a chore might send the wrong message to that kid?

I understand that I’m one of the fortunate parents out there who is lucky enough to have a job which allows me a limited amount of paid leave for sickness and doctors’ appointments for myself and members of my immediate family.  Not all parents have such a luxury available to them.  And I can only imagine that the decision to keep one’s kid home when s/he is sick is a tough one. That being said — I would only hope that the welfare of the child would come first when the case is cut and dry. If the kid has a fever? If the kid has been vomiting? That should be a no-brainer.

This doesn’t just apply to attendance at school. I work in very close quarters with my colleagues. When one of us is sick and comes to work if potentially affects everyone. Some of our management gets this and encourages us to stay home when we’re sick (again, taking advantage of our paid leave). But we have some management in place who all but harrass those who opt to take a sick day to recoup. Perhaps they think that the system is ripe for abuse and are trying to make sure that absenteeism doesn’t run rampant. But while they’re doing this, they’re discouraging the contagious from staying home — and promoting the passage of germs from one employee to another.

Is it commendable to have a perfect attendance record? Sure. But at what cost?