A little over a week ago, I woke up sick. There was no
warning, no harbinger, no inkling the day before. All I can remember is that I
had gotten caught in the rain on my bike, and was so warm from the ride when I
got home that I didn’t get out of my wet clothes right away. (My son scolded me
for that.)
This illness was different in other ways, too. I wasn’t able to gargle,
sleep or pseudophedrinate it away. I took the bus into school on
Wednesday because I wasn't up to biking and I taught my classes, but knew that I wouldn’t be able to do the rest of the
things I had planned that day. Thursday I felt too weak to leave the apartment and cancelled my classes, rescheduling one and offering an alternative activity for the other. I thought, OK, I’ve got the weekend to
recover, and my other classes won't suffer.
The weekend wasn’t enough. I dragged myself to my Russian doctor on
Monday, and he told me I had the flu and that my asthma was exacerbated. He
also wrote out a certificate commanding/permitting me to stay home from work
for the week.
I was flabbergasted, and I realized that what my friends
said on Sunday – when I was pretending to myself that I was well enough to go
to an afternoon tea – was true: I am too American.
In the US, when you get sick, you do everything you can to
deny it at first. Then once you know it's a fait accompli, you do everything you can to make it hurry itself
through its paces. Illness is not productive, and in a capitalist society,
everything needs to be productive. Add to this the fact that some people,
myself included from time to time, don’t have the money to go to the doctor,
and you can see why we are in denial about illness, why illness can be a
catastrophe. If you have no insurance, or a huge deductible, a $100 office visit is only the
beginning of the impossibilities. Antibiotics at $50 and more a cure, maybe
even an X-ray at $200 or more, blood work, etc. No, far better to “man up” or “suck
it up” or “chin up” (why do these expressions always have “up” in them?) and
get on with your productive life – even if you’re working at only 50% capacity
because you can’t stop coughing.
But this isn’t all. There’s also the sense that you’re
letting down those who depend on your work. Your students won’t get the lessons
you would teach. You’re the only one who knows where those important files are
that your boss needs for a meeting. How will the meeting go without your brilliant
ideas, and who will look out for your interests?
There’s another way to look at this. Why, in the States, is
your work more important than you are? What kind of twisted arrogance is that?
Here in Finland, people find that attitude difficult to
understand. My Australian friend said, “Stop being so American, get to the
doctor and take care of yourself!” My other friends echoed this. Take care of
myself? Isn’t my job to take care of others? How can I not meet my BA thesis
students for two whole weeks when they are just beginning to work out their
research plans? How about those exercises on writing definitions in English for
my first-year students? What about the department meeting now that we have some
serious curriculum revision work to do?
None of that matters if you’re sick. In fact, teachers are
under no obligation to reschedule classes they miss because of illness. You’re
also not obligated to find a substitute teacher. The material is either folded
into another lesson, or it doesn’t get taught. And nobody considers this a
catastrophe here. It’s just part of the reality of life – people get sick, have
accidents, can’t do what they’re supposed to do for very good reasons.
Yes, I’m very American. I have guilt feelings because I’m
lying here on a couch watching movies for what seems like days on end – even though
I’ve been feverish for a week, I have no appetite and I feel generally
miserable. And I realize that it takes a while to dismantle decades of a different attitude about work
life, or work vs. life. But I can get used to this. I can get used to going online when
I feel sick to pick an appointment with a doctor the next day, and then cancel
classes by sending a few e-mails. I can get used to walking into the building,
sliding my Kela card into a slot that automatically tells the doctor I am here,
and waiting for at most 10 minutes outside his door. I can get used to ‘my’
doctor (I call him that now since he’s the only one I’ve seen since I arrived
in Finland) looking at me with a slightly amused expression as I croak “away
from work for how long??”. I can get used to being able to
sit with a pharmacist who puts together my medicines before my eyes and talks
to me as long as I have questions. And, perhaps best of all, I can get used to
a boss who says “You just focus on getting well” when I try to tell her that I
will work on things at home as I am able. I can get used to being treated like
a human being, and not like a guilty sinner, when I’m sick. This is one area
where I’m very willing to be less American.
