Day 117

This is the last blog post labelled according to days off work sick. I am taking tomorrow as my day off, so I expect to sleep perfectly tonight and to have no pain tomorrow. It is 8:53am as I am writing this with abdominal pains and a headache, but at least I slept reasonably well last night. I don't really expect tomorrow to be pain-free, but I will be having a day off. I have come up with an imaginative title for Sunday onwards; you will just have to wait and see what it is!

Anyway, within half an hour of writing yesterday's blog the chair of district texted me. We now have to figure what a phased return looks like in reality.

I got thinking about being blanked yesterday and it brought up an old memory from when I was 13. One thing I've liked about this time off is that it has brought up old memories. When I was 13 it was 1975. A good year for music! My parents had their 25th wedding anniversary on the 23rd September. We had been to a lot of wedding anniversary parties over the previous few years, but my dad wasn't like that. He said he didn't want to spend his money on other people; he wanted to spend it on himself. So instead of paying for a party where other people could enjoy themselves at his expense, he booked a coach trip "down south". We lived in Cheshire; "down south" was where posh people lived. I had a cousin who moved there. We didn't know where "down south" was, but we knew they were all posh people! The specific part of "down south" that our coach trip took us to was Bournemouth.

I should add at this point that as a minister I have lived and/or ministered in every county on the south coast and I know that they are not all posh "down south". (Just imagine what they thought of us who came from "up north"!)

Anyway, this was a 10-day coach trip and as soon as we hit "down south" I had a migraine. I didn't know it was a migraine; I just knew that my head was exploding (and for Pink Floyd fans, it wasn't with "dark forebodings").

These headaches were all day every day. And my dad was not happy! He told me I had ruined his holiday. We went to some kind of variety show one evening and I laughed at the comedian. Afterwards, he said it was convenient that I didn't have a headache when I was enjoying myself. I actually did have a headache, but I can multi-task: I can have a headache and laugh at the same time.

But it has made what has happened during this 4 months off make sense of a sort.

There are those who show concern. My mum took me to the doctor when we got home and he said the atmosphere in Bournemouth may have caused the headaches. She supported me on that occasion.

There are those who are annoyed when my illness interferes with their plans. Another minister who works too much and goes off sick.!!! "We are not getting value for money". (I heard that one used about another sick minister, so I guess it's been said about me now).

And there are those who say the illness isn't real. How can you eat; smile; drive the car; feed hungry people, etc. if you are ill?

I would hate to be like the people in the second two categories. I have never been a shirker; and I am not shirking now, but as I said in my occupational health meeting, in any other job I wouldn't be going back yet. I would wait until I was healthy.

So that's it! The final post for days off. I'll be back on Sunday as a working minister.