Oh no - feel better!

As for calling in sick - my contract says I will give parents as much notice as possible if I feel I cannot work however they have to accept that 'illness' does not come on a schedule and they may be called at anytime to cancel care or pick up their child.

I have woken up feeling 'iffy' in regards to health in the morning and unless I am actually vomiting or diarrhea when I wake up I tend to just give parents a heads up at drop off "Just to let you know woke up this morning not feeling 100% but am hoping to make it through the day if we keep it a 'light day' of free play and quiet fun likely a little more Treehouse than I am generally comfortable with - if anything changes and I feel it is not prudent to continue trying to care for all the kiddies I will give you a call" .... generally they are all perfectly comfortable leaving their kids here with my 'germs' plopped in front of the boob tube doing 'quiet day things' as long as it means they do not have to take time off to be home

If I am feeling 'done in' after a day like that I will use a sick day the following day and tell them that at pick up time .... "today whipped me so I think in the best interest of everyone I am going to take tomorrow off and hope a days rest will have me back to my ole safe - I will call by 7pm tomorrow night if I am going to need another day other wise see you Wednesday morning' .... that way they have ample time to make plans for back up care.

I have only had to call in sick in the middle of the day once - got hit with a Rotavirus that every client had already had and it hit me out of the blue - one minute I felt fine serving the kiddies lunch and next minute I was in my kitchen feeding the kiddies and the vomit and poop was coming whether I liked it or not it was HORRIBLE cause I did not even make it to the bathroom ... the kids were awesome and stayed sitting in the kitchen entertaining each other with conversation until I could compose myself enough to help them clean up from their lunches and move to the couches in the livingroom where I proceeded to call their parents with a bucket between my knees .... everyone showed up within 20 minutes tops to collect their children and most apologetic cause they knew it was their kids who had 'shared' the gift with me But seriously it was nasty took me THREE DAYS to recover from that bug!!!

More often that not I work through anything but vomiting ... I took time off this year because I found out I had pneumonia in both my lungs, a UTI and the Xray showed a cracked rib presumably from the coughing and in reality I only closed because the antibiotics had the side effect of vomiting and after going to the Dr after work and taking them I woke up in the morning puking ... I would have worked otherwise cause I am an idiot and had been WORKING with that for weeks anyway because at the time I had no fever or other symptoms other than the nasty barking cough ... assumed it was a 'virus' and nothing could be done about it...if I had not developed the UTI symptoms that gave me the fever I am not sure how long I would have been walking around with the pneumonia untreated assuming it was virus