Sick

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.