Sick

Last Thursday I started feeling really bad.  I started getting a headache, but the different kind I normally have.  Usually my headaches are specific to a certain area of my head.  This one was all over, and I knew it was my “sick” headache.  Then started feeling weird body aches and chills and started feeling nauseous.  I went home and took my temp and it was 100.5.  I took some excedrine and that lowered the fever for a while, but it came back.  When I woke up, I told N I was sick, but he was just like “Oh,” and he didn’t even look up from his phone and kept scrolling.  I later mentioned I shouldn’t go to work, but he was like, “I feel bad everyday, but I still do stuff.”  He doesn’t have an actual job.   It’s some online stuff that doesn’t even make much money at all.

But anyway, he was like, “I feel hot and get headaches too, but I still go out to the store and stuff even if I don’t want to.  I’m pretty sure I have fevers all the time.”  I asked him if he ever takes his temp, and he said, “I don’t need to, I know it’s a fever.”  He’s a hypochondriac to some extent and won’t admit it.  If he is even mildly uncomfortable or inconvenienced, the world ends.   When we all had to start wearing masks everywhere because of covid, he would go in a store and start complaining how he couldn’t breathe, then leave me in there and walk out.  I wear masks at work all day every day.  I don’t complain because I know it’s something I have to do.  You also get used to breathing in one, if you aren’t too busy being a baby about it.

Anyway, so he was dismissing me being sick and saying he goes places while feeling bad.  Um, you go to the store.  I have to get up, take a shower, get dressed, drive 45 fucking minutes to work, work physically for 8 hours, then drive back home 45 minutes.  That’s different than taking a 20 minute trip to the store, which I wouldn’t expect him to do if I truly believed he was actually sick.  But anytime I do feel bad, I am dismissed.  Like I’m not really sick and my pain couldn’t possibly be as bad as his.  I even said, “Maybe I should take one of our at-home covid tests, just to be safe because I don’t want to get anyone else sick if I go in.”  He was like, “I really don’t think you need to do that.  It doesn’t seem necessary.”  WTF?

And I rarely call in to work.  Like, I’ve called in twice in the 3 years I’ve worked at this place and once was because I couldn’t drive 45 minutes in the snow and ice in my tiny VW beetle with shitty tires, and the 2nd time is because I was with my mom when she went to the hospital, so when I mention calling in, it’s not thought about lightly.  Anytime I DO mention calling in, he gets mad for some reason, and says I shouldn’t do it.  There was even a day, it was snowing so fucking hard, but I left anyway, started my long journey…. the roads were terrible and I was only going about 20 mph, then my work called while I was on the road and told me they called everything off and I could go back home.  So I turned around and headed back home.  When I got back, it was like he was so pissed off for some reason.  He was like, “So I spent that time cleaning the snow and ice off  your car for no reason?”  I said, “I didn’t ask you to, I could have done it, no big deal.”  And he went on and one for an hour about how stupid it was that my work called everything off.  I couldn’t understand why he was so mad I didn’t go to work.  It’s not like we’re hurting for money.  I make pretty decent even though he makes almost nothing.

So, last Friday when I was sick and mentioned calling in, and he dismissed me, I just went in anyway.  I felt like the walking dead.  I was so nauseous, I had to keep sitting down, so I didn’t throw up.  Every time I sat down, I would feel better, but if I had to get up and walk around, I felt terrible.  I was so relieved when I finally got home Friday night and just went to bed.  I feel better now, except a bit of a lingering headache.

Sometimes I really fucking hate him.