I told them I was ill

In the interest of balance (whatever that might be!) I came across this in a very funny book by John O'Connell called "I Told Them I Was Ill" which should bring good cheer to the hypochondriacs amongst us:

"I am 33 years old. Height just over six foot. Weight: ten and a half stone. Waist size: 32 on a good day. I have never been seriously ill or had an operation that required a general anaesthetic. I'm not allergic to anything that I know of, apart from magical realist novels, films starring Kate Beckinsale, and group holidays in rented villas.

Increasingly though, I worry. I worry about illness and death. I was born two months premature, an identical twin. My brother Richard died of respiratory failure after three days. When my parents brought me home from the hospital my bones were still so soft that my mother had to keep turning me over in my Moses basket so that my face didn't slip out of shape. One night she fell into a deep sleep and forgot. To this day she maintains that my face is lop-sided. I maintain, pace [William] Blake, that symmetry is fearful.

None of this augured well. But look! - here I am against the odds.

Do I live healthily ? Kind of. But this healthy living is passive rather than active. It consists of not doing things (eating junk food, smoking, drinking to excess) rather than doing them (exercise). And apparently this is not good enough, not anymore, not at my age.

'You never exercise' says my wife, who does exercise three times a week. She hires a personal trainer - a witty tri-athelete called Helen. Helen comes to our house in the morning, early. When she knocks I shuffle to the door in my dressing-gown, coffee in hand. Then I call upstairs: 'Whippet woman's here!' 'Don't call her that!' 'What ? Who ?' 'Helen. Don't call her whippet woman!' 'Why not ?' 'It isn't nice.'

I let Helen in. 'Hello' says Helen, all smiles. 'How are you ?' Cathy skips down the stairs dressed for action. She tells Helen: 'he's worrying about his health again.' Helen turns towards me. 'It was your prostate wasn't it ?' Cathy rolls her eyes. 'Last month, yeah.' Helen, a sensible woman, has no wish to get caught up in some tedious micro-spat; but in the end her urge to be polite gets the better of her. 'What's the worry now ?' Cathy answers before I can. 'He's had a spot on his chest but he popped it and it went septic. Now it won't heal.'

This is fairly accurate. But it isn't the whole story. The whole story ?... Well that's a different matter. The whole story of my spot is a passable introduction to a bigger story, whose erratic, tacchycardiac rythmns compel more of us than we might care to admit: the story of hypochondria."

I Told You I Was Ill: Adventures in Hypochondria by John O'Connell (2005)

Published by Sort Books (London).

Are you being worried to death ?

I've just come across a new book called "Medicine Balls" by my favourite TV doctor, Dr Phil Hammond. It's very funny and poignant - here's a very brief extract:

"Medical researchers have become just like the rest of us, desperate for media exposure. If you feed anything to a rat in large enough quantities, either you give it cancer or you cure it of the cancer you gave it in the first place. Either way, you've got a paper in The Lancet and all the fame and funding it brings.

But experts have been known to get it wrong. Remember the 'BSE in sheep' scandal ? Or rather non-scandal, because the experts mistook the sheep samples for cow samples. They should get out of the lab more. The sheep are the ones without the udders.

And what about SARS ? Three thousand column inches of panic, and not one death in the UK. True, it took some nifty global infection control and we had to lock up an entire hospital in Canada but it never reached us. Still, if you wanted a train to yourself, all you had to do was stick a Chinese flag on your luggage and cough.

In contrast, a hundred people a year die falling down the stairs. Every year. Why don't we have a STAIRS scare ? Even more people die when they're wearing those ridiculous SARS masks because they can't see where they're going. Falls in the elderly are a better predictor of death than all the health scares put together...

Bird flu happens to birds. It may transfer to humans but you can cut your risks by not having sex with a wild goose. Or if you do, please use a condom. If chlamydia and bird flu mix, we're all going down.

Healthy is what you are when you're not worrying about your health. Most health scares never happen. And yet they cost the NHS a fortune in panic management. Either ignore them, treat them as light entertainment or, if you're like me, do the opposite out of bloodly-mindedness. I eat beef, use a mobile phone, vaccinate my kids and have unprotected sex with all my geese. Works for me."

If you want to find out more take a look at:

Medicine Balls: Consultations with the world's greatest TV doctor. Dr Phil Hammond (2007)
Published by Black & White Publishing Ltd.

And if you want to find out how easy it is to scare us where our health is concerned read:

Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming - Why Scares are costing us the Earth. Christopher Booker & Richard North (2007)
Published by Continuum.

Healing into Recovery

Healing invites our active participation in its process of reparation: it asks us to cultivate openness, patience, forgiveness and love in order to move beyond our immediate pain into a place of possible reconciliation.

Cultivate healing as a daily practice. Engage with the calmness and serenity of a stilled mind that will help us to leave behind all the anxieties that have built up in our lives.

Healing is a process of regaining wholeness, of coming home, returning to our deeper selves which we have managed to abandon - that's it's role.

Make time for breathing exercises throughout the day. Bring your conscious mind to your breath. Is it rapid or shallow ? Slow it down, make it deeper and gain the benefits of a relaxed state of being.

Allow thoughts of healing to saturate your mind. Allow yourself the precious time of escaping from your everyday doing, doing, always doing world.

Put aside criticisms, judgments and opinions that you have no right to carry and then the healing can start.

Healing can only come from the depths of our own hearts. It's a gift we give to ourselves.

Healing is the positive learning we receive from our suffering.

Healing involves listening - paying attention to our woundedness and the voice that surfaces from that dark space.

A body in pain is a body wanting to be heard, wanting to be heard.

We have to be in the body to heal the body, so exercise mindfully on a regular basis.

Because healing involves us in going forward and in growth can we really say no to it ?

Therefore, take your healing into your meditation and take your meditation into your life.

Finally, if you don't meditate - start today, right now! May we all find healing.

Michael Lewin.
Mick Lewin is a writer and artist and is also the current treasurer of The Buddhist Hospice Trust.