As a student, I was one of those types that had anxiety dreams about attending exams and forgetting how to spell my own name.
Before my driving test I dreamed the car had changed into an 18 wheeler truck with 10 forward gears and two reverse.
Fortunately these days there are no examinations that I need to pass, unless of course you include dental check-ups, eye tests and NHS screening programmes.
While such tests require no swotting on the part of the recipient, they do still manage to elicit some apprehension because there is still an element of "pass or fail". There is a sense of wanting to make the grade – not least because failure to do so will undoubtedly lead to further probing – rather like a re-sit or viva, only worse.
It’s not unusual for me to start a check-up with a caveat to the doctor about my tendency towards white-coat hypertension.
“Actually your blood pressure is pretty good,” my GP said last time, “but your pulse and sweaty palms are something to behold.”
The only reassuring aspect is the knowledge that some of my medically trained friends are far worse than I.
“Every time my glands are up I assume I’ve got Hodgkin’s Disease,” said an undergraduate medical student that I know.
Another doctor friend recently asked me to look at the black speck on her face.
“What do you think that is?” she asked.
“Well you’re the doctor and I’m a journalist, but if I were to hazard a guess, I’d say it was a black-head.”
“Oh yes, I hadn’t thought of that, I was too busy thinking about melanomas.”
So given all this free-flowing angst, I would ask that as the debate heats up on the NHS Constitution’s proposed five yearly patient health-checks, that consideration is given not just to the economic price but the cost to our mental health!
