(*It’s been a rubbish week, but I thought that you would be more likely to read on if I called it the same thing, but in Latin).

I overheard this conversation between two women in a shop last week:

“I need to get back to the size I was.”

“How did you do it last time?”

“Anxiety.”

My old enemy, also known as Anxiety, was back in town and it wasn’t good to see her. As usual, she was uninvited and, like the dog who tries to mate with your leg at a sedate dinner party, I couldn’t seem to shake her off for a few days. (Hopefully you would get rid of the dog before this if it really was a dinner party).

I realised that I last felt this anxious when I found out that I had been going out with a delightful man, who actually turned out to be someone much less pleasant, some years ago now.

I remember that (after checking the contents of my bank account – you never know, he used to creep round at night), I used to walk on Hampstead Heath, taking in deep breaths beneath the trees and chanting to myself: “I’m still breathing the same air. Not that much has changed.” Not that much, of course, apart from feeling utterly humiliated and wondering how I could have been so stupid.

There was a time after that, when I was in a job that terrified me so much towards the end, that my hands shook, all the time. In fact, everything shook so much that I lost a dress size.  But don’t worry, I’ve since found it again.

I really don’t want to be anxious. No one does, It’s like having a weight on my chest and an emptiness at the top of my stomach that I can’t fill, no matter what I eat, or do. Almost everything during the horrible week makes me anxious – meetings, phone calls, courses, whatsapp messages, the lack of whatsapp messages, cancelling appointments, battling with health insurers… you name it, there it was.

Apart from going out with the cad mentioned above, I have found out that it’s often not really the “big stuff” in life that causes anxiety.  Sometimes it’s a millefeuille of “middle class problems”, that in many ways I know I am fortunate to have. In short, I can cope with most things, but I have realised as I grow older, that I can’t deal very well in the same week with:

a) talking to health insurance companies; 

b) going on courses where everyone else is younger than me – at least, not in the same week as (a), above;

c) garden centres in the same week as (a) and (b). They may tip you over the edge, causing you to bulk purchase reed diffusers.

For the remainder of this post, we’ll just deal with (a):

Health Insurance Horribilis

Last week, I arrived home to a veritable swathe of envelopes! Musing on my sudden popularity, I soon found that they contained ill-photocopied chaser invoices from a Consultant and other medics who had become so fed up with waiting to be paid by a health insurance company that they had forwarded the bills to me – and the message was,  “pay up.”  In another helpful turn of events, I found that the medics in question didn’t take credit cards, even when “Please give this your urgent attention” was written in red biro, using the top of a ruler.

Six phone calls, two cups of tea and various levels of frustration later, the “Mystery of The Medical Report That AXA PPP Said They Never Had” was solved by a lovely woman in Guernsey.  It was sorted. She had a contact. He had looked in an archive, on a server, and there it was, the document which had always been there, stating why I had needed to be in hospital for seven nights (not because I just fancied it), and stood between me and £2,300 (to be exact) that I now didn’t have to find a way to pay  – the fees I should never have been asked for in the first place.  Someone had “archived it”.

Everyone got paid, as they should have months ago. And that was that.

After six months of dealing with the same claim, (and taking to Twitter  – I was mad with a lack of sleep in hospital); I felt like a robot repeating the same story, if robots are capable of almost breaking down when anyone in a position of authority in a health insurance company is actually kind to them.

It’s great to have health insurance, I’d just rather not speak to a Claims Team who repeat ad nauseam:“Is anyone else on the policy with you?” At this point, I begin scanning my life for invisible dependents and imagine us all standing on a piece of A4 paper. “We still need some more information. Have you logged into Customer Online?”  Believe me, dear, I’ve tried.  That’s why I’m calling and yes, I know it’s being monitored for “training purposes” under the category of “How not to deal with the Crying Woman six months after she was in hospital.”

Anyway, all’s well that ends well, as I believe Shakespeare said.  As you are no doubt thinking, “Stop whining, and do a bit of  deep breathing and count your blessings.” I promise that I do indeed practice this, a lot, but sometimes you have to acknowledge Anxiety for the little unexpected dog enemy that it is, wait for it to detach itself  – and get back to that dinner party.  Thank you for reading.

Next time: You Never Stop Learning.