Britain’s benefits bill is out of control (Image: Getty)
Every cell in your body feels like it’s screaming when you go cold turkey from heroin. But you can’t die from the withdrawal. This advice dates back to the days when I knew more drug addicts than art dealers, and it felt very real after my latest bout of chemotherapy. Chemotherapy side-effects aren’t alien to me as I’ve spent three years at the NHS’s pleasure, being kept alive while battling incurable bowel cancer.
But, oh my, Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey – I’d forgotten how bad the side effects can be. With the cancer progressing in my body, I’m back on a drug called oxaliplatin, after not having it for two years. Hopefully it will work by bashing the bad cells into smithereens. The downside is that I’d forgotten just how much it doesn’t discriminate and also likes to bash good cells.
Waking up a couple of days after treatment, I felt like I’d angered someone to the extent they were stabbing a big voodoo doll of me. But all of the stabbing sensation came from the inside, as if millions of tiny knives were trying to burst through the skin of my legs.
Not to be outdone, my arms also felt like they were being controlled by an unworldly puppet master who, instead of wanting to make me dance, was content with just making every millimetre of skin feel like it was being stabbed from the inside.
There was also the severe pain that felt like a toothache, stretched across all my gums for days, and hiccups.
Yes, hiccups. I used to think of hiccups as a minor annoyance in life, coupled with the entertainment of trying to get rid of them by singing, drinking water “backwards”, and all manner of other remedies.
But post-chemotherapy hiccups are something else. They start deep in my diaphragm, shake my body, and occasionally cause me to vomit.
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.
This story originally appeared on Express.co.uk
