Nothing could have prepared me today for what happened. I knew this fitness to work assessment was going to be stressful, I just could have never imagined just how so. I arrived into office at 9 o’clock as requested by my employer. I was then greeted by the man who was assessing me from occupational health he wanted to go through a form on my levels of fitness and my mental ability to work. He told me this was going to take an hour and half. I explained I didn’t have the time to do this as I had to be with a service user by 10. We talked a little in the car on the way to the service user. I didn’t really trust the guy that much and was very worried about giving anything away that could be used against me.

On arriving at the service user I was pleased to see he was standing to one side and not trying to distract me by asking questions as I was working with Service User. We all went out to town to look at different shops and it was quite difficult for me  as I was trying to make sure that I was not giving him any concern to make me unfit to work.

After finishing with the service user we stopped at Tesco’s to get ourselves some lunch and a drink. While sat in the car he wanted to go through some of the assessment form, I wasn’t over happy with this as I knew just what was waiting for me in the afternoon group session and thought it would been good just to sit and not talk or do anything. Having a hearing loss having to listen to someone is quite tiring and with him not being English either made it even harder to understand him. After 30 minutes I said that I needed to go and I couldn’t answer any more questions.

Time was about 1 o’clock now and I was heading off to my group session a few miles from our location. Around 1:15 he told me he started to feel dizzy and could he have a drink of water. I handed him my spare water bottle in the car. He said he would like something with sugar in it. I asked if he was diabetic he said no. I didn’t think he was looking too great. By 1:25 he was really started to worrying me as he wasn’t responding to me. I quickly stopped the car next to a shop and ran in to get a sugar drink as it did seem like he was suffering from low sugar levels as a diabetic, he couldn’t sit up and wasn’t really able to talk to me. kept saying he felt dizzy, light headed, place spinning.  I quickly shut the door and drove off the main road around the corner to centre that I should have been working at asked them to dial 999 as I have a man in my car that is seriously ill. I explained that I wouldn’t be able to work with my group just yet as I need to make sure he is ok. Two members of staff came out with me and he didn’t look well at all. The time now was 1:30 he had got much worse and wasn’t able to sit up in my car and was lying across the seats semi unconscious.

Lucky for me the ambulance centre is next door to the day centre I was due to work so they were on the scene within 2 minutes.  I didn’t hear what the paramedics where saying to him or the manager of the centre who came out to see what was happening. All I know is they have taken him off to hospital now. He wasn’t able to get out the car on himself and wasn’t able to stand so the paramedics took him on stretcher into the back of the ambulance.

I guess this begs me to ask the question is my job so difficult I have worn the poor man out and he has ended up in hospital? I know when Scope came to observe me they also found my job very exhausting and hard to keep up with me. The other question one has to ask who was really fit to work?  The most frustrating thing for me is it now means I will have go through the whole process again. I really hope it’s not the same person as I had to do a lot off running back and forth from the car.

What was also quite stressful is after all this has happen and by about 1:50 I had to go back into the centre and carry on with my group session like nothing has happen.

Talk about a long day