No self-respecting person wants to think of themselves – or worse, be thought of by others – as a hypochondriac. The word conjures up images of a ruminating fusspot wasting the valuable time of hard-pressed doctors, such as the one who said to my friend when she apologised for taking up time: “Don’t worry, you’re the first sick person I’ve seen this week – usually it’s a blister on their thumb or they’re a bit fed up.” Another friend attends a practice renamed The Health and Wellbeing Centre, “which is annoying if you’re genuinely really ill.
They’re infused with toxic positivity – ‘Why not wait for your appointment on the beach?’ chirps their leaflet. ‘You can take one of our beepers with you!’ Because it’s a 15-minute walk each way and I feel like death, that’s why not! They also recommend you pay huge amounts of money for their non-NHS services too – drum-bothering and such malarkey.’” I hate hypochondria.
It’s a matter of extreme pride to me that I’ve been struck off by three GPs in London and Hove because they assumed that I’d moved away as I contacted them so little. When I’ve been asked what made me a writer, I don’t say it because it sounds weird, but I often think: “hearing about that woman’s womb that fell out as she got onto a bus!” As a teenage girl, nothing made me feel that ordinary life was not for me more than my mum and her cronies discussing their own and their friends’ various gory ailments in .
