Thursday, June 11, 2009

Piggy pox

Is swine flu the piggies' revenge for their horrific treatment in battery farms?

We had a little of excitement at work today, when the big boss rounded us all up for an emergency staff meeting. One of my colleagues is off sick with suspected swine flu!

To be honest, I'm not at all convinced the poor woman has it. She sounded like she had a minor cold, and probably it was only her recent trip to Australia that alerted the folks at the medical centre. I hope she doesn't have it because she's pregnant and I wouldn't want her baby to be traumatised in utero.

But on the other hand, the prospect of being quarantined at home for a whole week - on full pay, I'd expect - is not exactly going to give me nightmares tonight. I wouldn't expect the pox to make me any sicker than that month-long cold I had not long ago. And the boy and TLM wouldn't have to stay at home with me - they'd get their Tamiflu and take off to the library or the shops or something, leaving me lots and lots of lovely sewing time...

I think maybe I could do with a holiday.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you know one of my favourite fantasies is being sick for ages and taking heaps of time off work so that I can just swan around the house and do baking and read books etc. Except that when I was sick (off work for a whole month last year) I didn't do anything like that!

Antoinette said...

I hope it's all a false alarm, and I hope you get to take a week of vacation soon. Sounds like you would really appreciate it. :)

Watson Woodworth said...

My job takes me to many clinics and hospitals and in the clinics in the exurbs there are big Health Department postings telling them not to go here but directly to the Emergency Room for swine flu (H1N1) and one even distributes masks.
I think the rich excel at paranoia. They can afford it.

Violet said...

donnasoowho: you'd probably have to have very specific symptoms to be unwell enough to not be at work - but still well enough to be productive at home. Like, in quarantine because you have a family member whose workmate has swine flu...

antoinette: no news yet about my co-worker, so at this stage I still have to go to work.

nigel: ah, but some of the more recent cases here have been where someone with swine flu went to their doctors' instead of ringing from home, thus forcing the medical clinic to send its staff home.