Health

January. When the assisted dying bill comes in, I’ll be first in the queue. Non-stop nosebleeds, Covid-esque symptoms, leg cramps, a cough resistant to antibiotics, and unremunerated press interviews for my Burton/Taylor book. In the old days I’d be in New York, running amok with publicity handmaidens, going on television and racking up bills in the Gramercy Park Hotel. Now everything is done from the back-bedroom here in Hastings, where I dwell in the slum district, my window overlooking immigrants doing their laundry. Paul Bailey went to the trouble of getting his name removed from my acknowledgements. That’s real hatred February. First anniversary of my myocardial infarction, when I collapsed in Morrisons car park.

‘An old lady’s fallen down – quick! She’s bleeding. Come help.’ An elderly woman lay on the entrance steps of the block of mansion flats, food from a Tesco bag spilled around her, blood spreading on the stone. It was clear she’d tripped and banged her forehead, opening a large gash over her right eye. The courier had already tried to call an ambulance, but been put on hold. He had to continue his delivery run, so he’d begun ringing doorbells to summon assistance. The lady was groggy but awake. I asked her name – Daphne. I helped her sit up, slowly, and propped her against the doorway’s cold brickwork. Checking she wouldn’t keel over, I ran inside for a box of tissues. We wadded up handfuls and pressed them on the wound to staunch the bleeding.

Is Wes Streeting the Hamlet of the Health Service? Is this undoubtedly talented and thoughtful young Labour prince fatally irresolute when it comes to doing what he knows must be done? Few politicians have articulated so clearly the need for reform of our healthcare system. Streeting’s insistence that the NHS should be a service not a shrine angered all the right people, which is to say the BMA. It marked a welcome departure from the treacly displays of affection which have hitherto characterised ‘debate’ about the health service. More recently, the Health Secretary has frankly admitted that the NHS is letting patients down and acknowledged its manifold inefficiencies. The need for change has been recognised. The case for reform is urgent.

For many readers, my absence from these pages may have gone unnoticed. Those few who’ve detected my disappearance might have idly concocted theories: maybe Shriver crossed a line in her opposition to uncontrolled illegal immigration such that she finally got the sack. The explanation is more quotidian. Six years ago, I was diagnosed with the unwieldy sounding spondylolisthesis: a vertebra in my lower spine had moved out of alignment, squeezing the nerves to my right hip and leg. I’d been managing, but the situation was degenerative. By this summer, I could barely complete a 15-minute walk, and – the limit – I could not play tennis.

I was on the bus recently and bored when I decided not to ignore but to answer one of those online questionnaires about adult ADHD. It was on Facebook, I think. Question 1) Am I easily distracted? Well, yes. 2) Am I often late? 3) Do I regularly forget appointments? Yes and yes. By the time I had arrived at work I had signed up to something called Impulse brain training. And in a few days I was quite sure that I’d been bravely suffering with undiagnosed ADHD for decades. I was half-caught in the adult ADHD trap, though I didn’t know it yet. Are you always late? Do you let people down? Don’t worry! Don’t sweat it! That’s just your ADHD I asked my brother and my friends what they thought and instead of laughing, they nodded sadly. Yes, yes.

I first came across the Zoe programme when a bright yellow package arrived on my parents’ doorstep last year. My mother, like many, had been wooed by the TV personality Davina McCall into ‘living her best life’ by ordering a Zoe gut-health testing kit (at an upfront cost of £299, or £599 for the Plus plan).  Zoe is the invention of Tim Spector, the professor-turned-health guru who ran the Covid symptom-tracker app throughout the pandemic. It’s a personalised nutrition programme that promises to make you ‘feel’ healthier and improve your gut health, energy levels and even flatulence.

Concerns have been raised in recent months after an outbreak of avian flu caused by the virus H5N1 was detected in cattle in the US. To date, 139 affected herds have been identified, and four dairy workers have contracted the virus. The UK Health Security Agency, which previously believed there to be minimal risk of the virus evolving into a form which could spread among humans, now believes there is up to a one-in-three chance of it doing so. A factory in Liverpool has been busy manufacturing stockpiles of a ‘pre-pandemic’ vaccine which will be given to farm workers and others in occupations that bring them into close contact with bird flu. We have been here before with bird flu.

When I go home to America next week for Christmas, I’ll go to church – the one my family and I used to attend every Sunday, a few towns over. I visit intermittently throughout the year when I’m back home, but I always go on Christmas Eve. The routine is the same: I sit quietly in the pews, sing along to the carols, and hope to have a second epiphany.   I had my first epiphany – that God exists – when I was a child. This, I’m sure, is the result of having two religious parents who raised me in the church. When I tell my British friends that I was brought up a Methodist, they tend to flash me a nervous look. I must assume that going to a Methodist church in the UK means something different than it does in liberal Connecticut.

What has Rishi Sunak’s government achieved in its first year? The highlights include a renegotiated Brexit policy and setting more practical net-zero deadlines. But Sunak asked the country to judge him on his ability to deliver his pledges set out at the start of the year. If polls are to be believed, voters are preparing to do just that. Inflation is falling, but that’s largely due to interest rate hikes announced by the Bank of England. The economy is growing, but barely. The NHS waiting list keeps rising – 7.6 million now in England alone. On this last point, no doubt the six-figure salaried consultants who keep striking deserve part of the blame. But to say the Sunak government is struggling to make good on its promises would be putting it rather gently.