Sick Daze

I should be backstage at Orchestra Hall right now, warming up for the concert that begins in 24 minutes. I was there this morning for the last rehearsal of the week, and even stuck around afterward for a chamber music rehearsal. Now, I'm slumped on my couch, sipping jasmine tea, watching a hockey game and feeling alternately cold, shaky, and generally lame. The thermometer says the fever that set in a few hours back is fairly mild, and when I called our personnel manager to let her know that I'd be staying away tonight, I also guaranteed that I'd be back tomorrow. With any luck, I'll be right.

I hate - hate - calling in sick to work. I hate it more than I hate actually being sick, which I also hate. In fact, when whatever this is that's currently attacking me (and you may keep your swine flu jokes to yourself, thank you very much!) was gathering steam last week, I went to work on a couple of days that I probably shouldn't have, just because I couldn't stomach the idea of wussing out and staying home. Part of it is that my job really is the most important thing in my life, and missing a day when my hands and arms still technically work makes me feel like I'm not pulling my weight.

Another part is that there are some people in my orchestra with real and serious medical issues that make my little cold seem like a hangnail. In particular, one of our violists suffers from an incredibly painful joint disease that sometimes leaves him doubled over with his eyes screwed shut or flat on his back in the locker room - and even on his bad days, which are frequent, he makes a superhuman effort to show up and at least try to get through the day. With colleagues like that around, the idea of missing a service for any reason just makes me feel, well, lame.

Of course, the flip side of that coin is that, unlike most people, I work literally shoulder to shoulder with my officemates, and no one likes the idiot who straggles into work on death's door only to pass his Martian Death Flu on to everyone else in the building. You think bugs spread quickly in your kid's elementary school? You should see how fast a virus can sweep through an orchestra. Not only are we breathing down each others' necks in a figurative sense, we're doing it literally as well. Everyone in an orchestra is more or less constantly breathing hard, spitting, sweating, and generally being at least vaguely unsanitary in the act of playing our instruments. So if I had shown up for tonight's concert, I'm guessing I would not have been a popular guy.

So it's tea and hockey for me, and a very early bedtime as well, in the hope that I'll be good as new tomorrow morning. Which is sort of important, because I've got four Kinder Konzerts to play starting at 9:30am on Friday, and because I'm the only violist in the group, and the only one who's rehearsed the repertoire, there's no one I can call to sit in for me. And yes, I promise to stay far, far, away from all of the kids...