Not me, but one of my co-workers came to work for two months with what she thought was a bad cough and maybe walking pneumonia; it turned out to be whooping cough. Actually, she still isn’t feeling well and she was on her shift today!! :eek:
Ealier this year I went to work feeling a little dizzy, I thought it was just tiredness, but it got worse and worse until I was sent home where I collapsed on my lounge room floor. And finally got some help 4 days later, having not eaten or drunk anything for 4 days, spent the 4 days unable to walk and puking every few minutes and finally decided I needed to ask my dad to drive 4 hours to come take me to a doctor. I ended up having to move back in with my parents for a month because I was unable to look after myself. I still get dizzy and fall over sometimes (I did last night, in fact, and felt like a total idiot because this time it was in public)
That’s not just the sickest I’ve been and gone to work, it’s the sickest I’ve ever been.
I already had a nasty chest cold and a temperature and had a nice productive cough going on, along with a nose completely clogged with what felt like cement. I was dressing for work and had leaned back a wee bit to tuck my shirt in, when…
I sneezed and coughed at the same time.
Thanks to my odd posture at the time, I felt one of the muscles in my back go SPROING!!! complete with knock-me-to-my-knees pain. I managed to get back up, get into the bathroom, get out my emergency (prescription) pain meds, took two, and then very carefully and cautiously went down the three flights of stairs to my car to drive to work.
I couldn’t get into the car. The pain was too bad to bend down. So I very carefully and cautiously walked across the parking lot (I worked at a call center in a mall, and lived just across the lot) and into work, where I delicately badged in and got myself situated in a chair, which took about ten minutes.
About twenty minutes later, it was no longer painful simply to breathe, and then ten minutes after that I got a screamingly angry, swearing caller who demanded my supervisor, and I very calmly flagged her down (since she was on another call) and politely asked, “Is there anything I can do for you while we’re waiting for her?”
It was actually one of the least stressful days I ever had at that job.
Corrvin
Went into work for a week with pneumonia and a pleural effusion (fluid in the lung lining).
After a few days off with flu the doc’ I’d seen said it was OK to go back. It eventually occurred to me that chest pains, not being able to walk up stairs without stopping for breath and waking up every night sweating probably meant that I wasn’t well. Got an appointment with a different doctor who had a listen to my chest and had me blow into a breath-test-tube-thingy. She said I only had half the lung capacity I should have and immediately sent me to hospital for an X-ray. The X-ray showed my right lung almost totally choked. The hospital doc’s stuck a tube in my chest to drain it. Turns out I’d been walking round for over a week with a couple of pints of yuk bunging up my right lung. In the end they kept me in for five days, when (after the drain and a day of IV antibiotics) I was much less ill than I had been when I was going to work.
The consultant actually said to me “I don’t think you realise how sick you’ve been”. I’ll know better next time. If you can’t sleep because breathing is painful, and you’re coughing blood - see a freaking doctor.
Not exactly sick, but a few months ago I was showing up at work with poison ivy all over my face. While it was uncomfortable, I didn’t feel it warranted staying home. The rest of the world disagreed.
I was back to work at a state park three hours after breaking my hand.
I took a hockey stick to my unprotected head at a morning practice and went to work at the state park. I did leave early because it wouldn’t stop bleeding (not badly. Just a little oozing) and Alias thought that I should see a doctor.
This one didn’t feel bad, but I looked terrible. I took a hockey stick to the eye and went to work two jobs the next day. One was the state park job (I wore sunglasses). The other was at a formal banquet at a local resort. For some reason they put me back in the dishroom.
When I worked at a deli, I went to work twice with the flu and a 102 fever. The first day I dragged myself through the day at about half speed. The next day I had a 6am opening shift and didn’t want to call anyone else in that early and left when the second shift person came in at 10. Spent the next week nursing a lung infection.
Hm, about 9 years ago I was working as a temp between jobs and was the receptionist/switchboard for Jefferson Surfitt [got I love that company name. They make cardboard boxes, more or less] and I had this nagging backache that I had had for the past few days. As the day went on, it started with a couple ibuprofin to get me out of bed which is normal, to 2400 mg for lunch, to crippling pain that made me beg to get off work 30 minutes early - which my super gave me as he had seen me coming in to work fairly sick and he knew that I don’t normally use illness to get out of work. I went home, and started a pot of rice congee with chicken, garlic and ginger as i was fairly nauseous. Our roommate of the time Ian got up [he was working nights as an auditor for a trucking firm] andd we had dinner. He commented I looked like death warmed over and left for work after telling me that if it got worse to call him and he would come take me to the acute walk in at the sub base.
About 2 hours later of extreme back pain, and finally spending an hour upchucking what seemed to be everything i had eaten in the past 3 days [where do the diced carrots come from, I hadnt eaten carrots for a week!] he called me, and decided to hook work and take me to the ER.
Wee walked into the ER, and the corpsman present said I looked like i was in full heroin withdrawl. Since it was 0200, the doc was able to take me in right away. He questioned me and finally got me blood tests, and a whiz quiz. Turns out that my kidneys were on the verge of shutting down from infection. See, I get asymptomatic bladder infections, and had had an infection perking along for quite some time that I had no idea about. That nagging backache [that felt like being hit in the small of my back with a baseball bat - which I had happen to me once] was my poor kidneys basically doubling in size :eek:
Week in hoospital, lots of antibiotics and a stern wearning from teh Doc, and a note in my medical files on base that I am asymptomatic and to test me whenever I come in for anything, and a couple weeks in bed at home. I never ignore back pain anymore…which sucks because of previous damage, I have chronic back pain…makes it a bit tricky.
I have my own business and work at home. I’ve got one partner.
For some reason he thought it would be fine to go on vacation the week we were supposed to launch a Web site for our biggest client to date. It was a huge site (about $30k worth), and everything was being run off their own in-house servers instead of our Web server (which I’m familiar with and have access to). I was in charge of getting it uploaded, testing, and then fielding calls from the company when they found stuff that didn’t work quite right and fixing the problems.
The night before all this, I started getting stomach cramps. Nasty, debilitating cramps which drove me right to the toilet with what I’d say is “explosive diarrhea.” The cramps and bathroom emergencies were pretty regular, every 15 minutes or so.
I woke up on the day of the “big move” to find my Internet connection was completely toast. There was an outage in my neighborhood. Needless to say, there was no way I could get this Web site set up without having a connection.
So I drove my feverish, clammy, crampy self to my boyfriend’s apartment (luckilly he lived only about 20 mins away and I managed not to shit myself during the drive) so I could use his connection. I had to get all of my “tools” set up and get the site up between bouts of cramps and bathroom time.
I got the site up and then laid down on the couch. But every hour or so the company would call with something I had to fix. So I would drag myself to the computer and fix it, cramp up, go to the bathroom, and call them back saying it was fixed.
It was absolutely horrible. I’ll never forgive my partner for leaving me in that situation. Of course I’m sure he’s all but forgotten it by now 
Just a really awful head cold, but it was so bad I couldn’t speak above a whisper - and they made me come in because i had to go to Buffalo for training. :rolleyes:
So I went, and was there for three days - and two fo them I did nothing. Nothing!
103.5 temperature, had been puking the night before. And naturally, the only other person who could do my job wasn’t available to come in all day, so I had to tough it out. Somehow I managed to survive that night of hell.
A few months ago my heart went into atrial fibrulation. My heart rate was around 180. I foolishly went to work. The wisely made me go to the hospital.
I had viral meningitis and felt like death. Well, actually, a few steps from death–I’d felt like death earlier when I was on a trip, and barely made it home. Went to the doctor and by that time I was slightly better, although not by much.
The thing was, we had something due up to the state and my boss was freaking. I didn’t have anyone to hand it off to, and short of my being hospitalized I didn’t know how to say I couldn’t come in. So I came in and soldiered on and got it done, wholly miserable. My officemates were not thrilled although I explained that viral meningitis was simply an extreme reaction to a fairly common and usually harmless bug. I wasn’t dooming them to the same thing (this is far different from bacterial meningitis, which can kill you).
Some years ago I was on my first large-scale excavation for the company I presently work for. I was hoping that the job would turn into a permanent gig so I was particularly diligent about doing a thorough, professional job.
Anyways, the series of sites that we were excavating are located on the central California coast and were just completely overgrown with poison oak. It was also early summer so the oils were running thick and rich. Within a short time, pretty much every piece of field gear I owned was covered…my tools, my clothes, my boots, my notebooks, cameras, etc. There was just no way to keep everything clean.
Within a couple of weeks I had massive, oozy, rashes over most of my exposed parts (face, neck, hands, and arms). But what no one could see was that, due to the poison oak soaking into my clothes, I also had massive, oozy rashes all over my legs, waist, and…ahem…other areas (the telling of which could be a whole 'nother thread). I was basically one giant festering pus-filled rash. It was brutal. The worst part was that I didn’t have any health insurance so I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) go to the doctor and had to make due with the over the counter stuff which, with the case that I had, didn’t really do much at all.
But, stiff upper lip and all that crap, I showed up for work everyday, endured the constant comments about my appearance and the unbelievable discomfort (it did turn into a permanent job).
The funniest part is that the following year I was talking with my supervisor who told me that the visit to the doctor and the prescription medicine would have been covered by worker’s comp!
Yeesh… I feel like a wussy for posting mine.
I had an out-patient surgery to correct a varicocele.
A few days later, at work, I began to feel chilled . So much that the shaking of my body prevented me from using my computer or answering the phone. In short, I sat in my chair and shivvered for a few hours. That subsided and I finished the day.
Next morning, I woke to find that I could not bend at the waist. It felt as if there was a brick below the surgery stiches in my lower abdomen. I made it to work and called my surgeon’s office and went in right away. Another doc saw me and removed the steri-strips with the words “Yep, you’ve got an infection all right!”
Great.
I started a course of antibiotics immediately.
That night I had terribly disturbing dreams of having a sticky fluid poured over me and being carried away in a river of the goo. I woke to find the incision draining copious amounts of watery-red fluid. I swear I didn’t think that the human body HAD that much fluid in it to start with. I bandaged the area with a double gauze pad and went back to bed.
The next morning began my vacation… and I flew to New Orleans.
I continued the antibiotics until they were finished. The site oozed for several days after.
So, it wasn’t so much that I went to work while sick… I decided that it wasn’t going to stop me from going on vacation!
I was working for an attorney. I woke up sick - serious stomach issues - but knew that I couldn’t call out of work; the attorney had court, the office manager had the day off and the other legal assistant was in a class. There was absolutely no way out of it. The 30 minute drive to work was hell on its own. Luckily, because no one was in that morning, there were no clients at the office, but there was a hell of a lot of work, and the phone was ringing off the hook. Every 15 minutes I had to run off to the ladies, and would come back in a cold, shaky sweat, and literally crying from the pain (and I have a very high tolerance for pain).
Finally the attorney came back from court just after noon. I told him how sick I was, and he said he’d call his wife to come in and cover the office for the rest of the day. She showed up at 4:30 - about 30 minutes before I was supposed to go home anyway.
I had a backache that wouldn’t go away. So, thinking I had pulled a muscle, I went to my doctor and told him about it, how it hurt on my right side if you pushed on it. But it didn’t hurt too bad, and I pooh-poohed his suggestions that it was anything other than a pulled muscle, so he gave me naproxen and sent me on my way.
Well, the pain *didn’t * go away. It slowly got worse until I’d have dull pain all the time and bright white flashes of mind numbing terror pain every so often. After a couple of months, I called the doctor’s office from work to see if they could call in a prescription for me.
As I talked to the nurse, I could hear in the background the doctor asking her questions to ask me. I was finally asked “On a scale of 1 to 10, what pain are you in now?” Oh. I hadn’t thought of it like that before. “Well it’s about an 7 all the time but when it surges it’s a definite 9. 10 would be passing out from pain, right?”
Dead air. “Um hang on and let me ask the doctor.” Mumble Mumble “WHAT? Why the hell isn’t she in the emergency room? Give me that phone!” And then Doc proceeded to explain loudly why *severe pain * = doctor every time.
So I drive myself to the emergency room. I had a fever of 104°, urine the color of cola, and massive kidney stone that was too big to go through available plumbing. About 1/2 inch by 1/4 inch of gravel that I had been lugging around wondering why it hurt so bad. :smack:
And that, dear children, is why your Auntie DeVena is an idiot.
i was declared dead at 11:57pm, October 17th, 1998. i was still at work the next morning at 8am sharp.
No no no. Far too brief. You can’t tell us something like that without details!
So give: How did you die? Did you see the light? Details sir, details.
Mid September 2003
Came down with vertigo and nausa, still managed to drag my sorry behind to the airport and off on a 1300 mile business trip.
Arrived alive, had dinner. Woke up holding on to the bed because I felt like the hotel was doing 30 degree rolls. This persisted untill the bosses boss decided that the paramedics needed to be involved.
After some pokeing and proding, they told me I had had two strokes, when the third one hit.
It took a month to escape the medical mafia.
Of course, I was selected for the body cavity search on the flight home :smack:
Good thing they did not xray me–explaining the stent in the brain would have been fun…
I’ve also gone to work with a black eye-I knelt down to pick something up in a dark room in the middle of the night, forgetting that I had a fan sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, and wacked my face on the chair. Yes, I know how stupid that sounds. I was so embarassed the next day because I looked like I had gotten the shit kicked out of me.
And then there was the time I had an abcessed tooth and the side of my face swelled up to about four times its size. I looked like a lop-sided chipmunk. Fortunately, my dentist told me I had to have oral surgery for it, so when I told my boss I needed to call in sick that weekend, amazingly he gave me the entire WEEK off.
Oh, and did I mention that my 21rst birthday fell during that week? Instead of hitting the bars, I was lying on the sofa with an icepack on my cheek and eating mashed potatos and pudding instead of birthday cake.