Get Well Soon by Nick Duerden

Author:Nick Duerden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Part Two

CURE . . . ?

Ten

We decide to go on holiday, Elena’s say-so. She is convinced it will do me, us, good, our first holiday in two years, and a chance for me to travel further than the front gate, or the nearest Costa. Google estimates a five-hour car journey, but Google does not bank on a traffic accident just outside Paris, nor on the unexpected early death of Elena’s iPhone battery, and with it the only satellite navigation system we have. This results in many wrong turns in what must be France’s flattest, most unremarkable region. There are few signposts, and little to tell us where we are.

We arrive 11 hours after we had set off, all of us tired and exhausted, legitimately so. The owners have been sat in the garden with the keys waiting for us for hours, they say. Before they leave for Paris, they tell us that the small outdoor swimming pool is closed until August (it’s June now), and that a storm is coming. Adieu.

The storm arrives within the hour, and the temperature plummets 10 degrees overnight. We wake up the morning after to find we really are in the middle of nowhere, but something inexplicable (to me) has occurred: for the first time in a long time, I awake without fatigue. It is as if, away from home, where I have built up such a store of bad memories, the maladaptive stress response has nothing to clutch onto, no negative connotations associated with the place. I still feel consciously fearful of overdoing it, but my subconscious knows better, and my anxiety loses its capital A. I wonder, only half-jokingly, whether it is possible to live on holiday, to never go home again.

When we return to London a week later, I make an appointment with the GP to request a referral to the local CBT clinic. The doctor looks from my notes to me with an unreadable expression on her face, asks me rote questions to which I offer my rote answers, and tells me that I shall be contacted in due course, ‘to see whether you qualify’.

A few weeks later, the call comes. I speak with a lady called Phyllis, and we chat in a way that seems to me informal and friendly. At some point I say something that makes her laugh, a high, lucid giggle that is infectious. As we end the call, I find myself hoping that she will be my therapist.

Two weeks later, I receive a letter. It says that, regrettably, I do not qualify for CBT on the NHS. I call Phyllis to ask why, and she explains that I had not shown sufficient signs of depression during the initial consultation. Quantifiable levels of depression are required in order to qualify, she says.

Phyllis is apologetic and empathetic. In her opinion, she confides, she agrees that CBT would indeed benefit me, but she says that NHS guidelines are there to be adhered to. The questions she had asked me

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