No Fun in the Sun

I am writing this on Monday afternoon at my parents house. The sun is shining outside and it's more than tempting to retreat into the garden with my Kindle.

However, my parents' GP whom I saw at their insistence told me to shun it. Apparently I've caught a gastric bug one of whose side-effects is palpitations (mine were of the rather scary sort that keep you awake at night and make you think you'd just finished a marathon) that you want to make go away asap in order not to suffer from chronic myocarditis or other heart problems. He made me promise him to take it easy and not get it in my head to get back to work too soon as he has patients who did just that and landed themselves those chronic conditions. He also told me to stay away from the sun as apparently viruses are "boosted" by the sun, whereas bacteria are killed by it. You live and learn! On Saturday, I inadvertedly did the wrong thing and sat in the garden for hours, followed by one of the worst nights in my life. Lesson learned!

The other lesson is not to drag myself into work under all circumstances. I felt like shit last Thursday, but still didn't stay at home. There were many days this winter when I didn't feel well, but didn't want to let the team down and resorted to my magic helpers (Vick's First Defense and LemSip) in order to nip it in the bud.

I was dead set on returning to Vienna on Sunday night as planned, but my parents, who were appalled by my zombie looks at the breakfast table eventually convinced me that the World wouldn't end if I failed to show up at the Firm on Monday. As my boss helpfully let me know in an e-mail it is "bad timing" (whenever is it "good timing" for employees to fall sick, unless it's a holiday, I wonder?) and I spent half the weekend working in order not to burden my colleagues with too much, but as this is my first ever sick-leave he might actually notice that it does make a difference when I'm OOO.

I might be lacking sunshine and its benefits, but I've discovered an alternative "hot-water bottle": place a Macbook Pro on your stomach and you'll have all the heat that you need...