Britain’s benefits spending has spiralled, critics say (Image: Getty)
Coming off heroin cold turkey can make it feel as though every nerve in your body is howling. The old line, though, is that withdrawal itself will not kill you. That was the sort of grim wisdom I picked up in a period of life when I knew far more drug users than art dealers. It came rushing back to me after my most recent round of chemotherapy. The brutal reality of chemotherapy side effects is not new territory for me; for three years, the NHS has been keeping me alive as I live with incurable bowel cancer.
Even so, dear God, I had managed to forget just how savage the treatment can be. As the cancer continues to advance, I have been put back on oxaliplatin, a chemotherapy drug I had not taken for two years. The hope, of course, is that it will smash the malignant cells to pieces. The problem is that oxaliplatin is not exactly selective. In its enthusiasm to attack the bad cells, it also takes a fair swing at the healthy ones.
A couple of days after the infusion, I woke up feeling as if I had seriously offended someone who had then taken revenge with a giant voodoo doll made in my image. The pain did not feel as though it was being inflicted from outside my body. It was worse than that. It felt internal, as if countless tiny blades were trying to force their way out through the skin of my legs.
My arms, unwilling to be left out, joined in with their own private torment. It was as though some supernatural puppeteer had taken control of them, not to make me dance or move, but simply to ensure that every fraction of skin felt pierced from within.
Then came the grinding gum pain, the kind that feels like toothache has spread across your entire mouth and decided to stay for days. And, bizarrely, there were the hiccups.
Yes, hiccups. I used to think of them as one of life’s harmless irritations, something to be laughed off while attempting the usual folk cures: singing, holding your breath, drinking water the “wrong” way, or trying whatever unlikely trick someone swears by.
Post-chemotherapy hiccups are in a different league. They seem to begin somewhere deep in the diaphragm, jolt through the whole body, and, at their worst, can be violent enough to make me throw up.
The combination of all this joy meant that my plans to create lots of amazing stories on the Monday after treatment were pushed back to Tuesday. I then didn’t feel well enough that day, so I delayed things until Wednesday and despaired as the pain in my arms left me wondering if I’d ever feel well enough to write anything again.
Thankfully by the Thursday most of the pains had dissipated enough so I felt well enough to write about a murder, a worldwide sweatshirt sewing project, and about workers facing burnout.
These experiences got me thinking about the discussions in Westminster and across the nation about how to bring the benefits bill down.
The answer is obvious, but the solution is really tricky, so no one is saying it out loud.
The problem isn’t the benefits system. The problem is the work system. Lots of people are on benefits because they cannot hold down a job, because they don’t know when their symptoms will be at their worst.
And, crucially, their employer isn’t flexible enough with work policies to allow them to do their job as and when they can.
This is the tricky bit because the world would stop working if everyone did their job only “as and when they can”.
We have a certain expectation that the services we need each day, from the barista at the train station to the power plant workers ensuring there is enough energy to heat your dinner when you get home, will be there.
I might be the only person in the UK who can work for a major company, and do the hours I choose when I’m not battling chemotherapy demons.
If this weren’t an option then I’d undoubtedly be on Universal Credit, destined to make the benefits bill bigger.
Employers need to, somehow, be more like mine and find ways to make the job system work so people aren’t reliant on the benefits system.
