Many years ago, my father was told by his GP that he had to go for surgery. And he had to go now: this was a physical time bomb that could detonate at any minute.
Obviously, my father was shocked and in such situations we tend to become compliant, to be swept up by the arrangements of others. He would never have been described as a stroppy man, yet when the GP picked up the phone to call an ambulance, my father suddenly became difficult. He insisted on driving the 60km to Galway himself.
Luckily, the drive was uneventful and the surgery successful, but when asked afterwards why he had driven, the answer was typical of him: ah, I didn’t want to make a fuss.
I still had a lingering sense that this was somehow a failure on my part
Typical of him, and his generation. Making a fuss was about the worst thing you could do. Having an ambulance turn up to the house – and the attention that might attract – could only be justified if he was completely incapacitated. And nobody, especially no man, wants to think of themself in that way.
Things are different now; but maybe not so much. Apart from a drama with my eye last year, I don’t get sick. I might get a bit of a cold during the winter, but I’d normally power through. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had to take any time off work and this wasn’t a source of pride or prompted by machismo – I think – just habit. I was never that ill.
I have developed a quarter-baked theory that it might be something to do with having psoriasis. The version I have is relatively mild. But because the condition is caused by an overactive immune system, I have wondered if it has provided me with the side benefit of beefed-up resistance to colds and flus. I have wondered if it’s why I never got Covid.
Admittedly, this is pub medicine. I won’t be publishing a paper on my theory any time soon. Anyway, in the real world the change in our culture is such that, as soon as you present with a few sniffles, you have to constantly reassure people that you don’t have Covid, which I found myself having to do a couple of weeks ago. I was testing every morning. But the sniffs and cough wouldn’t shift, until I was sitting up in bed at 3am, unable to go back to sleep and googling “symptoms of pneumonia”.
It was only then that I admitted to myself that I would have to take a day off work to go to the doctor. And while this is a perfectly natural thing to have to do, I still had a lingering sense that this was somehow a failure on my part.
The visit with the GP was perfunctory. He listened to my back, asked about phlegm colour, gave me a prescription for antibiotics and told me to come back if they didn’t work. I had known better than to go in there and announce that I had pneumonia, yet I was a little disappointed that I didn’t. After all, I’d gone to the trouble of taking a day off work. I’d made a fuss and if you commit to a fuss, there has to be a payoff of something even mildly scary sounding. I am my father’s son. I’m vehemently anti-fuss.
But it could also be the result of working for decades, and the iron habits that this etches into the mind. Not to be at work feels jarring and unnatural; somehow wrong: the industrial form of Catholic guilt.
Many of us are shackled with this. A few days later, Herself started to feel a sore throat. She had the option of working from home, but after a few Covid tests, opted to go into the office. When I pointed out that she didn’t seem to be any better, she shrugged and said: ah, you know. And I did.