Even with the new job – which I love, which half the time doesn’t even feel like work – my clockwork sometimes fails me. Crawled into bed relatively early last night because I could tell my body was trying to fight off a cold…woke up, bolt up right at 1:30am gasping, completely unable to breathe for what felt like a minute but was probably only a few seconds. Got back to sleep…woke up this morning with a throat that feels like I’ve swallowed sandpaper crossed with…something extremely acidic. While I can speak, it’s only in a very low very quiet whisper – in short…for the purpose of teaching? My voice is useless. May as well say I can’t talk at all…because there was no way I was going to be able to raise this up to teaching level…
The thing is, this was at 7:30 in the morning, and my first class was at 8:30…medical? Who is the only one who can clear me as off duty? They don’t open until 9. Which, incidentally, is also when my boss gets into the office.
What exactly was I going to do before then? We’re strictly not allowed to take ourselves off of duty after all. This isn’t grade school, where you can just not show up and Mum will call you in…
So I found the one person who was already on duty – the Hotel Director, who thankfully is enough of a friend that I could walk into his office this early in the morning. I managed to tell him what was going on…and he pulled me off duty.
Shaughnessy can’t really speak…so she can’t really do the teaching thing…because that’s just…not going to work. So can we have a sign for her door please?
At least that’s enough to get me to medical…
Why is it always my voice that gets hit when I get sick? And it’s not like I make a habit of getting sick in the first place. Trust me, I would much rather work if I could…I hate this feeling fine but knowing just knowing that if I try to talk my way through a day of teaching with this throat then by tonight it will be fully gone. I know that as a singer…because it’s happened, and it’s nasty. I know logically that I need to rest my vocal chords now when they need it a little less or the damage will be worse and I’ll be out for longer (as it is I’ll probably only be out for today)…but that doesn’t mean I have to like it…