Sick daze

Clearing your head enough to decide whether to stay home sick or go to work

You know the feeling. It’s decision time.

It’s early in the morning, and you’re lying in bed.

Your nose might be a little drippy. You might have a twinge of a sore throat with that icky taste in your mouth. You might feel a little achy or have a cough.

Sure, you could fight through it and go to work. But the telephone is within reach, and it would be so easy to call in sick, roll over and go back to sleep.

What do you do?

“Those are hard questions to answer,” says Jon O’Neal, physician in occupational and environmental medicine at Lawrence Memorial Hospital, 325 Maine. “It depends on your threshold. It’s a very individual thing.”

According to a recent survey, 49 percent of employees “very frequently” opt to go to work when they’re feeling ill, with an additional 31 percent choosing work over recuperation “somewhat frequently.”

With cold and flu season quickly approaching, many people will be faced with the daunting question: Should I stay, or should I go?

Michael Kennedy, assistant professor of family medicine at the Kansas University Medical Center, says the decision of whether to go to work is as much about your co-workers’ health as your own.

He says there are some telltale signs you’re probably contagious and too sick to go to work:

¢ A temperature of 101 degrees or greater.

¢ A strep throat diagnosis, until 24 hours after antibiotics are started.

¢ Diarrhea or vomiting.

¢ Shingles, rashes, pinkeye or other topical ailments that could be transmitted.

What about the kids?

Grown-ups have a tough enough time deciding whether they should stay home sick.
Figuring out whether their children are truly ill enough to miss school could take a crystal ball and tea leaves.
“With my high schooler, when the Monday morning stomach ache rolls around, I usually ask if there’s some homework that needs to be done,” says Katy Buck, nursing facilitator for Lawrence Public Schools.
Buck says parents face two different challenges, depending on the age of their children: Older children might fake being sick to miss school; younger children might not be able to articulate that they’re ill and ought to be at home for the day.
“Number one for kids, it’s if they both look and feel sick,” she says. “Sometimes kids can fake out their parents, so we suggest more objective things to look at.”
The schools have a list of ailments that students shouldn’t come to work with. It’s posted at www.usd497.org.
The symptoms include a temperature over 100.4 degrees, vomiting or diarrhea, chickenpox and head lice.
“If the child has a big behavior change – if they’re usually a perky kid and they’re just laying around and lethargic – if they’re not their usual self, it’s a good clue to keep them at home,” Buck says.
Often, Buck finds, the child’s health isn’t the only factor at play in deciding whether he or she should go to school.
“A lot of what it boils down to is can the parent take work off or not,” she says. “It’s often more centered on the parent need instead of the child. Sometimes students are sent to school when they really shouldn’t be.”

¢ A diagnosis of influenza.

Play it safe

Because symptoms of many of those ailments could be signs of more serious medical problems, O’Neal suggests taking a “conservative” approach. For instance, he says, fatigue and shortness of breath could be a sign of a cold – or lung cancer.

“There are no specific guidelines,” he says. “I always say if you’re sick enough to think you’re not able to go to work, you should probably see a health care provider.”

Even without contagious symptoms, there may be arguments for staying home. After all, Kennedy says, a day of bed rest can be an effective treatment.

“You can really get very fatigued if you’re up all night for whatever reason, like coughing,” Kennedy says. “Your productivity at work isn’t going to be that good.”

Kennedy says taking painkillers for the flu might make you feel better, but you’re probably still contagious. And other drugs, such as antihistamines, might make you drowsier than you might have been without medication.

Balancing act

Bosses face a delicate balance in wanting employees to be productive but knowing that contagious workers could infect their peers and lead to more absences.

“We put a lot of emphasis on teamwork in our operation,” says Keith Folkman, manager at Sauer-Danfoss Inc. in the East Hills Business Park. “Some people feel an obligation to be at work even though they’re not feeling well. If you’re not feeling well but not contagious, it’s probably OK to be at work.

“But we have a lot of positions where people are working closely with each other. So if you’re at work when you’re contagious, there’s no way to keep others from being sick.”

Folkman says Sauer-Danfoss, which manufactures power systems for mobile equipment, tends to leave the decision of whether to come to work up to the employee – though he says he does occasionally hear workers ask their peers whether they’re well enough to be on the job.

“It’s hard to set a black-and-white guideline,” Folkman says.

At Amarr Garage Doors, employees have a third option other than going to work and staying home – seeing an on-the-job nurse. The nurse works 12 hours a week and can help diagnose ailments.

Kirsten Krug, human resources manager at the plant, which also is in the business park, says some employees work hard to keep perfect-attendance records going and want to be at work when they’re ill.

“We appreciate the dedication,” she says, “but we don’t want everybody to get sick. The real question is, ‘Does them being there make the environment worse for everyone else?'”

Krug says being sick on the job can be a serious threat to employees and their co-workers.

“They need to be able to perform their duties in a safe manner,” she says. “If they are weak, or they can’t stand up, they’re a significant risk. At some point, you have to say, ‘This is not just about me. I’m endangering other people.'”