question re sick leave

Stellata · 17-01-2011, 03:37 PM

I'm off sick today, and was on Saturday. This is due to my depression etc causing me to struggle with the whole prospect of the upcoming redundancy procedure.

My GP has increased my medication as of last Friday.
My therapist has told me that I am indeed unwell right now.

However I have come out of the worst of the breakdown state I was in last week.

I've got tomorrow booked as annual leave, from a while back. But I have been told to phone my manager tomorrow to say whether I instead need to have tomorrow as sick leave. I have tomorrow off work in either case, but I have to define whether I'm still unwell enough to have it as sick leave, or not.
I don't know what to do!

I came back from therapy this morning and slept for an hour or so. I needed to. I'm still feeling really drained and numb, and also really emotional inside my head. The prospect of being back at work scares me. Everything is an effort, including typing this.
But I know I need to draw the line of 'too unwell' and 'struggling, but managing to work somehow' in a way that's respectful to me.

I don't want to need to take a whole bunch of sick leave, as I don't think that would go down very well, especially right now. But equally, I can't help it.

Oh and because I have to phone my manager in the morning, I have to make myself wake up to do so fairly early on, when it's my day off,...

Thoughts?

Pomegranate · 17-01-2011, 05:20 PM

To be honest I would be tempted to keep it as annual leave unless you could do with keeping as much of your annual leave as possible for any reason. The reason being that whilst you cannot help being sick, I also think you are right in that it would be better if you could keep your sick days to a minimum. I know you would not take them if you did not need to but since you already have tomorrow booked off that it might be more simple to leave it as that. Also if you phoned her today and told her (or maybe emailed her later) you were doing that then you would not have to get up so early and could get some much needed rest. It is up to you at the end of the day. I also think that taking another sick day and then worrying about how they will view it will make your anxiety about your current work situation even worse.

CagedBird · 17-01-2011, 09:06 PM

I agree with Pomegrante. It makes a lot of sense just to keep it as annual leave esp as you'll likely be so anxious about phoning in sick etc tomorrow. I'm the same, i normally go into work even when I know full well i'm sick and will cry/SH at work just because it is 'less hassle' than phoning an taking a sick day. I find it scary too.

Stellata · 18-01-2011, 10:28 AM

Thank you both.

I said I would take it as the a/l, but I did explain the ambiguity, and it was ok.