What do you do when you need a rest due to illness?

I read.

Read a book, meditate, strum my guitar maybe even sing if no one is around. Take an easy walk to the corner and back with the dog. Have a cup of tea and lounge on the deck watching all the birds. Take some pictures. Organize files on my computer, sort socks, make a nice flavorful soup, take a nap, at some point fill up the tub and take a relaxing bubble bath. Dang….I haven’t been sick enough to take off work in over 10 years…I need to catch the flu or pneumonia or something.

If I’m sick enough to actually rest, I’m likely wrapped up as tight as a burrito on my bed with the lights off and the white noise machine on, in a Benadryl coma.

You can’t sleep / lie on bed all the time even though taking rest might mean that

Actually, you do sleep/lie in bed all the time.

I had an appendectomy when I was in my late forties, and after a week of recovery from surgery, tried to go to work. I took the train into the city, was at my desk for an hour, and was so exhausted I went home and just slept and lay around for another week.

Serious illness calls for serious rest.

Wow. I tried to stay home after my cholecystectomy. Had a four year old at home. It hurt less to be at work.

I was once laid up with pneumonia. I did not have energy to get out of bed, but I was not sleepy. I was too weak to concentrate on reading, so I listened to NPR on the radio.

If I’m sick and need rest, that is what I do. I lie down in bed/on the sofa and turn on the radio. I usually can’t manage reading books when I’m really sick so I turn to magazines. They usually fall to the floor when I fall asleep. Television is too demanding when I’m not feeling well.

Internet videos.

My daughter is sick, but pushing through. There have been times when I didn’t have sick leave, for example, when I was working through a temp service. I pushed through because I could not afford to miss one single day of work.
I finally got a full time job that afforded sick leave. I was absolutely floored at how quickly I healed up when I was able to just rest, even for one day.

To me, “resting” is simply not doing anything you don’t want to do, even if it should be done.