A confession, before we begin: I am a relatively healthy, 27-year-old woman. I am also a hypochondriac.
Not a chronic one — I don’t spend my days obsessively Googling what food groups I should be eating, or how much caffeine a day is too much — but enough that, whenever I get ill, I fly into panic mode. Days where I get a sore throat, or a slight fever, are enough to set me off: the thermometer is located, the Lemsip sourced, and the mental composing of my own epitaph begins.
With that context, perhaps it’s a bit easier to understand the impact of the doctor and nurses’ strikes on my everyday life.
My particular brand of worry falls a long way down in the pecking order — there are seriously ill people who need care a lot more urgently and deservedly than me, of course — but nevertheless, the strikes have forced me to reorganise my plans, cutting out the riskier elements of my day in favour of playing it safe.
Taking cycling, for instance. Two or three days a week, I heave my rusty old bike down the Holloway Road, dodging past traffic and angry taxi drivers as I do so. With the strikes on, this has become a lot less appealing. After all, what if I get knocked over? Will there be an ambulance? And if I manage to get to hospital, how long will it be before I’m seen? The NHS is already on its knees; factor in strikes, and there might well be no care at all.
For hypochondriacs, it can sometimes feel like the world is out to get you, and that kind of anxiety does a lot to limit the way you enjoy your life. After all, if you can catch a flu simply by heading into work (and there’s no guarantee of speedy treatment), perhaps it’s easier to stay at home with Doctor Google instead.
This can be applied to pretty much everything: not trying new foods, ‘just in case’, overanalysing every throat tickle, or cancelling days out on the off-chance that something will go wrong (all things that I have done, with profuse apologies to my friends).
With that in mind, here’s hoping that the strikes are over soon — if only so that I can put the lid back on my anxiety levels. Do I agree with the strikes? Yes, in theory. But the sooner they get sorted, the better.
