Sicknote

I called my GP, Dr Natarajan, a couple of days ago, to get a sicknote sorted out. It briefly crossed my mind do this some weeks before, but then something happened and the thought went completely out of my head: which it says everything you need to know about my state of mind at the moment.

At the end of May, near payday, Lyn from work rang and asked what I was doing about getting signed off. I went blank: when she heard the confusion and panic in my voice, she suggested I take a couple of weeks paid holiday for the time being while I sort myself out. Thoughtful, kind and organised. Bless her.

I work for an accountant in Shenfield. Part of what we do at work is sort out the paperwork of people who, really, have got the nonce to organise themselves - they are running a business, after all - but they get distracted, can't get themselves to concentrate for long enough to anaylse their financial records, forget about the deadlines, or can't face the dreaded official forms, so they pay us to do all of that for them.

I realise I've switched sides: stopped being the sorter-outer, become the sortee.


Once I recognised I had to contact my GP, I began to panic about that. After all, I look fit and well - I am fit and well, bar the geting exhaused walking up stairs/not sleeping/getting tearful over minor setbacks/unable to think about anything concrete for more than 5 minutes, and so on. I read all the stuff in the papers about sick notes being replaced by fit-for-work notes, and about disability scroungers, and think, am I actually able to work after all? Will the GP give me a hard time, call me a lazy layabout, tell me I need to pull myself together and knuckle down? Will he say he can't sign me off now but demand that I see him immediately when I get out of hospital, make me sit in his waiting room feeling like death and risking infection so he can see for himself just how ill I am?

I finally called the surgery on 6th June after the Jubilee waterfest weekend to be offered an appointment on the 15th June. I'll be in hospital by then. OK, said the receptionist, how about the 12th? That's admission day. No. We agreed that he would phone me on the 7th.

Pacing around all day, waiting for the call, afraid to spend too long in the shower, listening for the phone, checking the line, ringing the surgery to check he really was going to call, I'm getting obsessive about this and I know it but I can't do anything about it. Finally just after 5 he called.

He was lovely. He'd had some of the correspondence from the hospital doctors, so had a rough idea what was going on, but more importantly, he understood how it felt to be given the original hideous diagnosis, then another which wasn't much better. He recognised that I had gone into a tailspin, and seemed to think that was OK in the circumstances. He even said that although he did want to see me postoperatively, "you've had enough doctors appointments going on recently, let's not book anything else. Come and see me when things have calmed down a little, after the surgery is over." And he's signed me off until near the end of July: by which time I'll be recovering from the operation and we'll know about any postoperative chemo/radiotherapy. I hope.