The germs are afraid of the hippos.
I feel like I’m always sick, but for me it’s always the same two things: allergies and IBS. I’m never completely free of either, and both cause a sort of low-grade drain on my physical resources.
In other words, I feel like utter crap most of the time.
I’ll give you my end of it.
Eight years ago, I was a miserable Human being. I hated myself, my life, my career, the entire fucking world. I was stressed out. I was sick all the time. Colds would last three weeks at a shot, then I’d no sooner get well then something else would hit me. Most of the time I didn’t mind, as it gave me a convenient excuse to miss work and personal functions that I didn’t want to be a part of, because of the depression aspects of where I was. I could call in just about any time, because hell, they knew I was sickly.
In retrospect, I see how this is a self-fulfilling process. Stress, anger and depression causing a circle of illness, which was never completely unwelcome because it too served a purpose in the cycle. And so when I see others in this same cycle, I recognize it for what it is. But beyond that aspect, it’s also a cry for help, for attention, in that you make yourself an object of pity, place yourself in a position to be able to ask for compassion, sympathy, assistance or merely “a break” on full accountability, because of your physical condition.
As soon as I decided to make a change, one of the first things I decided was that I was sick and tired of being sick and tired all the time, and I wasn’t going to be sick anymore. And whaddayaknow, I wasn’t. I pretty much immediately became completely immune to every cold and flu virus that circled around my environment. When I’d get sick, I’d take Eccinacea and it’d be over in, at most, a day or two - and be very minor in that period. Simply because I had decided in my mind, and continued to reinforce on a regular basis - that I didn’t get sick anymore, that I wasn’t going to allow myself to be sick.
That being said, right now I’m stressed out by a great many things, and am at the tail end of a multi-week cold that brought down most of my department, caused by our instructor insisting on remaining in class even when he could barely walk, and giving it to all of us. But this is the first full-blown long-duration cold I’ve had pretty much since I originally made that decision.
A lot of it depends on environment. In America, working as a secretary, I was never sick. In China, working as a teacher, I am sick pretty often.
Wow, first time I think I’ve ever quoted myself, but it’s to make a further point.
In reading my own post, I saw this and immediately thought of my ex-wife, the Sympathy Vampire. She’s always sick, always bruising herself, always depressed, always suffering from some odd twist to her mental illness (she’s on SSDI for mental illness). The entire reason for all of it being that it allows her to garner that sympathy, to not be held accountable for her actions, to not be relied upon by others, but still be able to call upon them for help. To always be considered the victim, who of course cannot help herself, so therefore whenever anything happens to her - or most commonly is CAUSED by her deliberately - no one can be mad at her or hold it against her - because she’s the victim here.
How convenient. How easy it makes her life, always receiving, never responsible, never punished.
And yet on a certain level, I can’t help but think how criminal it is that she is allowed to go through life dumping everything on everyone else for her own ease.
I don’t think it’s children, necessarily. I worked at a tutoring center where all the employees were in close contact with grubby children all day long. A normal employee was out sick maybe once a week. Some employees seemed to call in sick all the time, once a week at least. I, on the other hand, accumulated almost two weeks of sick time because I was hardly ever sick. And frankly, I was probably the least vigorous hand-washer of the bunch.
My current job (also with small children) has incentives for going a month without calling in sick. Every month, only about five of sixty people in my division earn the incentives. It’s usually the same people every month. What is different about those five people?
I used to be sick constantly, as in to the point where people probably thought I was faking. I found out in January that I was anemic (my hematocrit level was 22%). After finally seeking medical advice on getting that cleared up (I won’t go into all the details – many doctor visits, mostly unrelated to my diet, blah, blah…), I became a happy, productive member of society.
I haven’t taken a sick day since March 4 and I’m really expecting to go a full year. That’s compared to last year when it was a struggle for me to go two months without a sick day (and feeling hellishly exhausted in between).
I had put off going to the doctor because I thought the tiredness was just due to being out of shape and getting older. Basically, I didn’t think they’d do anything except tell me to be more active. That sounds stupid to me now (like, shouldn’t it have been obvious that I needed a doctor?), but I really couldn’t think clearly then.
So, in short, there might be some underlying reason they’re more prone to sickness, but they’re so used to being sick they’ve never thought of talking it over with a doctor.
While I’m certain this is true in some cases, it’s not true it others. I’m sick fairly regularly (colds and sore throats, mostly) but I never end up letting it get in the way of my daily life. I haven’t missed a class (I’m a college student) due to sickness in college or high school ever*. I haven’t been stay-at-home-and-rest sick since seventh grade, but I do get a sore throat, runny nose, or cough maybe three times a year.
*This is not to say I’ve never used a sickness as an excuse to miss a class. I think I’ve done that three times in the last six years.
I’m sure that the vast majority of people who are sick “ALL the time” are genuinely sick.
I think that some of us who claim to be “NEVER sick” would probably do better to look a little closer at the evidence… maybe a visit to the doctor is in order. 
I also would venture to guess that there is a correlation between age and “never sick”-edness. Anybody above who claimed to be “rarely sick” above the age of 50? 40?
Well, one thing that bothers me is when people attribute being healthy to being of good character or being unhealthy to being of poor character. I’m not saying there’s never any correlation, but I think it’s a lot closer to random chance than otherwise.
In my family, I am the designated sickie. My brothers’ illnesses added together don’t equal all of the rounds I’ve had. I’m no fan of being sick. Believe me, I’d much rather be up and about. Stuck at home sick got old around sixth grade. I do what I can to muddle through, recover quickly, and not get sick again any time soon. Sometimes I have success, sometimes I don’t.
First, I had crappy tonsils, and I happened to come of age right when medical wisdom decided to stop taking out everyone’s tonsils and not take out anyone’s. I didn’t get my tonsils out until I was 32. The ENT doctor who removed them noted that they were both atrophied and scarred over, indications that they’d been infected multiple times. After I healed up from that, the number of sore throats, fevers, bronchitis, ear infections, and sinus infections I had were cut to less than half.
But I still get sick, more often than most people, and far more often than I’d like to. I have plenty of hay fever allergies, which often leads to sinus infections, and because the sinuses are ennervated by the trigeminal nerve, which is implicated in migraines, I often get migraines along with my sinus problems. Add to that the occasional disabling bout of depression, and a very good year is when I don’t use all my sick days and have to take time off without pay.
So, am I cursed? Am I a hypochondriac? Am I unlucky? Lazy? Not taking care of myself? Clearly, there are things I should do to protect my health that I am not. I don’t exercise enough. I don’t cope well with stress. Oftentimes, my nutrition goes to hell. That’s certainly part of it.
Along with that, I’m fairly sure that there’s a genetic component. I am a dead ringer for my maternal grandmother - both by looks and personality. She was also sick a lot, and that was as a Kansas farmer’s wife. I think that prenatal environment has a lot of influence over things like brain and gut development, and the brain, the gut, and the immune system are far more interrelated than most people understand. Now, I’m not sure what Mom was doing while she carried me - probably the best she could - but there might have been some stressors that had an influence on how well my immune system developed.
When I was a small child, both my parents smoked. There’s plenty of documentation showing how much damage that can do. When I was a pre-adolescent, I had undiagnosed ADD and depression, both of which were huge stressors, and, I’m convinced, both of which set me up for a lifetime low tolerance of stress and a cruddy immune system.
I do what I can. If I get sick with something communicable, I stay home so I don’t infect others. If I get sick otherwise, I work through what I can. I try not to whine. My friends have instructions to pelt me if I do.
Would it kill ya to show a little compassion?
Just to clarify - I didn’t mean to imply that it’s always the case that people who are always sick are exaggerating/searching for attention. I said that I think that’s a lot of it. Of course there are people who have legitimate health problems. But statistically speaking, there are more healthy people than unhealthy, and I think it’s a legitimate possibility that many of those healthy people, for some psychological reason or another, paint themselves to seem more ill than they really are.
(And no, I’m not one of those people who never gets sick; I average a good cold per year, had the flu and bronchitis last winter, and for the past two years have spent most of the spring funneling my paycheck directly into allergy meds. I’m not doubting that people get sick.)
My father is almost never sick (like, once every couple of years) He
-is 60
-travels internationally fairly often and flies domestically at least once a month on business
-Was born in a refugee camp to a concentration camp survivor in 1948… I’d call that a less-than-ideal gestation.
I’m well into my 40’s and am never sick. The last sick day I took was ten years ago.
I just don’t get sick. I’ve never had the flu nor have I had strep throat, even when both of my kids and my (now ex) wife had it all at the same time. I have had injuries and have twice gotten food poisoning, but never the garden variety “sickness”.
I think some of it is how people handle discomfort. I do catch a cold once in a while, but it’s just an annoyance to be dealt with, not a thing to agonize over. My ex grew up to believe that a sniffle was cause to call the doctor and get him/her to call in a prescription to the pharmacy. In the 90’s when Dr’s stopped overprescribing antibiotics she had a fit. She’s the kind of person who treated a sneeze by putting on pyjamas and a batrobe and slippers and curl up on the couch with hot tea and a box of tissues and call her mother. She would absolutely wallow in the sickness.
I get about one cold a year. Generally in autumn, although sometimes late summer.
I’ve noticed that my stomach has gotten more “sensitive” as I’ve gotten older. (I just turned thirty.) I also notice that a hangover used to last a couple of hours, and now lasts all damn day. Which is just my youth waning, rather than a “huge health problem.”
Other than that I’m pretty damn healthy. Which makes me–I feel rather unjustly–suspicious of people who are always sick. Perhaps they are. Perhaps they are just the unlucky ones. I should feel badly for them. I should feel lucky.
But instead I have to restrain the urge to roll my eyes at them, like, “No way you’re REALLY sick THIS OFTEN.”
I feel like I should be a more sympathetic person.
And the main reason I think I should be more sympathetic is b/c when I was younger, I used to get truly debilitating, physically crippling menstrual cramps. The kind that are absolute agony, that lead to cold sweats, shaking, diarrhea, vomiting, and–on more than one occasion–crawling around on the floor sobbing, wishing somebody would shoot me.
They’ve lessened as I get older–I haven’t had a month like that in years–but it used to drive me nuts that lucky women who didn’t get cramps like mine…the lucky ones who could just pop some Midol and go on their merry way…always assumed I was exaggerating, if not outright making them up. Particularly if I tried to call into work and a female manager was working.
I’m sure there’s lots of women who have “invented” bad cramps to call into work, or whatever–it’s the world’s perfect sick day because it’s impossible to prove and doesn’t require a doctor’s note–but I’ve probably called into work sick maybe a dozen times since I got a job at seventeen, so it used to make me absolutely furious that people–especially women–assumed I was lying or exaggerating.
So perhaps the OP and I could use some sensitivity. Maybe we’re just lucky. :eek:
Oh yeah, I’ve been getting that since the sixth grade.
I’ve always gotten sick. A lot. For years, every month I’d miss a couple of days of work, and it led, predictably, to being labeled a bad employee, due to something I had zero control over. I went to doctor after doctor, and none of them had any idea what was going on. Last year, I ended up at my doctor’s office in tears because I got seriously chewed out by my boss, and she sent me to a psychiatrist, who recognized my dysthymia (a mild form of chronic depression).
Put me on anti-depressants and I’m good as gold - I could count my sick days this year on one hand.
So yeah, I’m rather pissed off at all of the people who accused me of being lazy, or wanting attention. I’d like to sentence them to 5 years of my previous existence, to see how they like it.
I dunno. I’m pretty bad ass at handling discomfort. I’ve broken some pretty essential bones and handled myself pretty well. I’ve had malaria and didn’t bitch much. I’ve lived in extremely uncomfortable climates and regularly engage in super-budget travel that puts me in extreme discomfort. I can sleep anywhere, will eat anything, and hate nothing more on the Earth than complaining princesses. And I hate doctors- I will do anything to avoid going to the doctor. When it comes to a ten hour ride in an 100 degree overloaded minivan on a dirt road with someone’s baby on my lap and chickens under my feet, I’m going to be smiling and chatting it up. Sometimes I’ve even wondered if my near immunity from discomfort is pathological. It’s something that people notice about me and comment on.
But I still get a cold every few months. Specifically, I get sick like clockwork when my students come back from breaks. During the period when I wasn’t a student or a teacher, I never got sick.
I don’t think it’s about how some people suck it up and handle it better. I do think some people do handle little problems better.
But, I think some people do get sick more often.
People calling in sick to work can be many things. Often depression. But some people get colds all the fricking time. It’s like they French Kiss everyone on the subway or something.
I don’t get sick either. Like Even Sven, If I catch anything at all, it is once a year when the cold creeps down to Florida and all the idiots put on the heat. The artificially hot, dry air leeches all the moisture out of me and I catch the creeping crud. Outside of that, I never get sick. Ever. I attribute it to the fact that as a sculptor, I work with a lot of dirty, germy stuff. Natural materials of all sorts, bones, feathers, clays, chemicals, dust, garden dirt for gardening, compost, etc. I get exposed to all sorts of stuff on a daily basis, and do not see a need for anti-bacterial nonsense of any sort.
I do engage in some healthy behaviour that balances out what many dopers would consider an abysmal state of hygiene though. I shower twice daily as a matter of necessity, though soap is reserved for those areas that need it and not for the whole body. I only drink fruit juices and water unless there is nothing else available. I carry a good body weight, and get a lot of exercise due to my job and habits. I eat proper meals, and plenty of them. I try to be positive as much as possible, and ignore minor discomforts.
OTOH, my sister is a polly prissy pants about everything, and she is constantly sick. There is ALWAYS something wrong with her. She knows better than to come to me for sympathy about it though. Unless your vomiting, crapping, can not breathe, or bleeding, I don’t want to hear about it.
Personally my pet theory is a combination of:
Good medicine= bad genes being more prevalent.
Constant handwashing, anti-bacterial sprays and cleaners= poor immune system
Lack of decent food, exercise, and general poor health habits.
Encouraging whiny, soft, lifestyles as “safe” choices.
I don’t get sick now as often as I used to, but I worked in a daycare for a few years and had a cold just about every month. The combination of taking care of all of those kids, plus having young kids of my own, was the perfect setup for catching a lot of colds. Now I don’t get sick very often, but when I have something contagious I stay home if at all possible. This helps speed my recovery and spares my co-workers from getting sick. It doesn’t have anything to do with feeling sorry for myself or attention-seeking (I usually want to be left alone to sleep and watch TV), but courtesy to others.
Here’s my theory about work. When you’re sick, stay home. How important are you, anyhow? Do you not have sick time? My husband got the flu a few weeks ago because some asshole came to work with a fever, chills, cough, and sore throat. Many other people became quite ill and then had to miss work. The earth won’t stop spinning if you miss a day or two. Use your sick time when you need to and give everyone else a break.
The moms who dropped their kids off at the day care where I used to work really pissed me off when their kids were sick. They would give the kid a nice dose of Tylenol to mask the symptoms, drop the groggy youngster off, and flee the room. Just like clockwork two hours later the fever, runny nose, and cough would emerge. We would make a phone call and mom would come back, acting all surprised. What a bunch of crap. We learned to recognize the symptoms of a sick kid in the morning; glassy eyes, lethargy from the cold medicine, and flushed face. “Is Brandon sick?” About half the time the mom would admit that yes, now that we mentioned it, he had thrown up last night and had a cough. Or that little Sarah did had a fever of 101 this morning, but the medicine ‘brought it right back down so they thought it would be OK.’ No, not OK. Take your kid and go home. The other half would lie but would have to come back and pick up their kid when the meds wore off. If they did it more than once, they were intercepted at the door if we were suspicious of an illness and questioned more directly. “Did Brandon take any medicine this morning? He looks a little sleepy.” Usually she wouldn’t directly lie to us. The worst culprit was someone who worked in the school office and got extremely cheap child care - $2.00 an hour IIRC. She was the first to drop him off and the last one out the door at night. She told us not to give him naps so she could feed him dinner and put him right to bed. He was two and we had him from 7 am to 6 pm five days a week. She worked 8:30-5:30, and we found out that she was dropping him off with us and going back home for a bit in the mornings. Nice.
Sorry, I got off on a tangent there. Anyhow, I don’t get sick too often any more. Maybe I’ve had all of the colds already.
I actually wanted to talk to the Dean of the law school about “medical presenteeism.” You see, if you miss more than the number of credit hours worth of classes, you are automatically de-registered and receive no credit, except where you have some type of long-term medical issue (pregnancy, surgery) and the Dean of Students clears you. So, for instance, you can miss 2 of a 2-credit class, 3 of a 3-credit class, etc. and after that you lose your credits for the semester. This means that people come to school sick ALL THE TIME. They are scared of losing their credits. The school claims that the policy is because the ABA requires students to attend 85% of their classes to maintain accredation. But there is a ridiculous lack of flexibility in the policy.
This caused me to come to class with what turned out to be “just a touch of pneumonia” (quoth the health center). Not cool for me OR everyone else.