FaCe It Campaign Launch
Apologies to those of you waiting to read about the press launch. I confess I have posted this entry after the day - I was side-tracked by the side-effects and didn’t get to the computer at all!
I was so tired when I got home from St Mary’s Hospital I slept for an hour; I went in to work at 3:30 feeling exhausted and came home at 10 pm wide awake and alert but physically depleted. A bit of a pattern to be coped with!
However, I did see a press launch and the media at work. At 9 am, in a small room on the 10th floor of St Mary’s Hospital a small group of journalists and officials gathered. Sir Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer for England gave a short presentation about the government’s awareness campaign on Hepatitis C and two questions were addressed from the floor.
The event was almost entirely populated by “suits” (both men and women) who soon gathered around the coffee and croissants pursuing their agendas and catching up with someone or other. Carol and I were the only ones not in “suit” mode. So I didn’t need “Patient Case Study” tattooed across my forehead as people seemed to know!
I was so struck by this. How naïve, it is what we all know - people dress to indicate their status and role. A few years ago, it would have been part of my professional work role to show up to presentations and receptions like this in “suit” mode. So I was confronted by my changed role and status - from professional colleague to patient.
No one from the press wanted an interview with the “Patient Case Study”. When I later saw the press coverage for the day and saw the BBC news website picturing someone injecting, presumably, illegal drugs I felt some relief not to be associated with this.
Looking at the press coverage and the launch I suppose I was left wondering why it was all so low-key….