Illin' like a Villain

[x_los]

I've been sick since Monday, and Shimrit, Renit and Raviv (the kibbutzniks over me) are just being asinine about it. Their policy for how to call in sick changes with their whims, and I never manage it right because it's different every fucking time. They seem to think I've been ill as something of a lark. I sent two people to my regional-boss to say I was sick today, as per the rules? Despite expressly being told to do just this at the last Volunteer Meeting, this was apparently not enough, I should have called as well.

1) That's not what they said, and
2) I CAN'T SPEAK ABOVE A WHISPER.

I wish I could call, but my voice DNE right now (laryngitis maybe? I don't think I've ever had this before). Do they realy think they could've understood my English over the phone /when I can only whisper/? Because good fucking luck. Their English is piss poor on a good day.

I'm tired of the kibbutz doctor holding out on the drugs I need for no reason. He looked at my throat twice before I entirely lost my voice and dismissed my pain as imaginary. He sneers when I don't come up with a fever and my blood pressure is fine. Despite the fact that I can say 'me fever broke last night, I was convulsing, you can see my nose is raw from blowing, please, please give me an antibiotic or a decongestant. He won't give me anything useful and I have to scrounge off the meds he DOES give friends, apparently at random, because all he'll shove at me is Tylenol. I'm tired of the condescension or mild disbelief that seems to imply I must be enjoying myself or something. Tired of the big performative SICKNESS I feel compelled to display at all times in case they catch a flicker of my returning health and decide I was too well to stay home at any rate. I didn't eat for like four days, or go out. I've LIVED on hot tea I've been into their shitty, useless doctor every fucking day. He's like Student Health from hell if there weren't any recourse to real medical treatment.

I'm constantly afraid I'll be kicked off, and thus effectively be deported, for being ill. I've gone into work when I wasn't ready and made myself sicker for it, prolonging a debilitating, horrible, painful illness that, with proper medication and rest, might well not have made me feel like an alien for a week. I'm a good, hard worker when I'm well: that's not me making a deluded assessment because I feel entitled or something, people here have commented on it frequently. I deserve a rational system of volunteer governance that doesn't keep me paralyzed with fear that I'll be penalized unfairly for something that was none of my making.

And my dad is driving me NUTS:

keithwhorak: So are you getting enough material to write a book?
me: oh I don't know
keithwhorak: will you have enough material to write a book by September?
me: dad. I don't know.

...keithwhorak: so how much weight have you lost?
me: I'm not sure?

Comments

[sanestlunatic.livejournal.com]

Hahaha my relatives do the book thing, too. *punts them*

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Like there's a cup, and if it fills up enough it'll tip over and a book will plop out fully-formed. That's how it works, right?

[sanestlunatic.livejournal.com]

Yes! And people will somehow miraculously be so interested by it that they'll want to publish it/read it/buy it. An American being unemployed in Scotland? Fascinating.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

"Would you read this book?" "Oh well I don't really read..." *headdesk*

[neutralalienist.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I'd very much like to shout at that "doctor" until he goes deaf.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

That's so sweet. A woman's always flattered by violence on her behalf. :p

[neutralalienist.livejournal.com]

That's not violence! That's lecturing! He deserves lecturing.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Well he is going to be /deafened/, which hardly seems polite... :p

[neutralalienist.livejournal.com]

He'll certainly remember it, though, won't he?