Back to Work

The job of looking for work that is. I'm due in next Friday (6th of January) and the holidays ended on Tuesday with the Bank Holiday (New Years is over the weekend so that doesn't count). I'm not entirely sure how much they can reasonably expect me to accomplish in my efforts to find work between Wednesday and next Friday, but I'm sure it won't be any less than is normal. I've already looked on the JC website - useless as ever - and there isn't much at all, unsurprisingly.
This festive season has been, without doubt, the most stressful of all I can remember. I'm still feeling the effects. I went into town yesterday and it's just so busy. I don't know how people can work in that kind of environment, but the Christmas temps/kids seem to be full of beans. That's the way the world expects you to be, all the time (well at least during the working day). Unfortunately, that's just not me. I can't be the person.
Unfortunately dealing with doctors is no help at all. They just don't take me seriously. But I feel so out of it at times at the moment. How on earth I'd be expected to function in a full time working environment I do not know, even one that isn't busy like the holiday sales on the high street. Having to deal with someone else's time schedule would be extremely difficult, especially with my screwed up metabolism (diagnosed though not specifically hypoglycaemia).
Doctors seem not to take you seriously unless you are dying on your feet. We are back to the grey area again: the system thinks either you are 100% fit or you must prove you are 100% not. Anything inbetween defaults to the former without exception. Whenever I've spoken to the GP they take a similar view; they will tell me that because I can act reasonably normally that they don't want to 'medicalise' my issues. They see that as somehow 'giving in' to the problem and thus making it worse. Unfortunately they don't understand that's how the welfare state works and the only alternative is having zero income. The great fallacy they and most people fall into believing is that if you 'sign off' you will immediately get work (or conversely if you sign on you instantly become unemployable, which is what my GP thinks). So regardless of the consequence of a lack of support, that is the preferable choice. So we are left to cope and manage as best we can, stumbling along the way.
I know my GP has told me he feels signing me off would only hinder my chances of returning to or finding work. That's all well and good, and no doubt being unwell will be viewed negatively by future potential employers - which is a sad indictment of the labour market - but what's the alternative? Penalise the sick? It's the system that's at fault. He, like many I suspect, expects the Jobcentre to do the job he thinks you want him to do: to help you and supprot you. But they are not doctors or therapists and, while you claim JSA (in lieu of an alternative), you sill have to abide by its conditionality.
It's also not helped when the GP regards your issues (as one did in respect of the above hypglycaemia condition) that because it hasn't killed me, it isn't a big deal (and she wondered why i had a 'face like thunder'). They think they are being helpful, setting you straight or even putting your mind at rest, but their ignorance of the system makes things worse. It's like the bus driver saying 'this is where i stop' when you wanted to go to the other end of town and then telling you 'it's ok, i'm sure another bus will be along in a minute'.
Doctors just don't get how the welfare system works and unfortunately don't want to. That's their prerogative and I can understand that - to a point. But it doesn't really help people that aren't getting any help and are struggling to cope with an inflexible monolithic welfare monster.