My life in ailments

My request to see my medical notes was granted in the end. I honestly don’t know why I wanted to see them, really. I’m just one of those people who suspects the worst of the state, and other large organisations, so if I get the chance to have a peek into what they’ve been up to behind my back I take it. This was my second Subject Access Request. The first was of the RSPCA, who I got a tad suspicious about after writing several critical articles and attracting weirdly sour-sounding complaints from them in which they claimed I was only criticising them because I was a supporter of hunting. That put my back up slightly. So I demanded to see everything in their possession that mentioned me. They granted my request, eventually, but when I got the slim package through the post it wasn’t very enlightening. It consisted of various emails between staff members in which I was discussed and went something like this: ‘Hi xxxxxxxx. Melissa Kite rang us today to ask about xxxxxxxxxxxxxx. We xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx. We also xxxxxxxxxxxxx. If xxxxxxxxxxxxx then we can xxxxxxxxxxx.’ I’m paraphrasing, but you get the picture. They had taken advantage of a neat trick called redaction, which allows any organisation to oil out of freedom of information by blocking out anything they don’t want you to see. As a result, I am left with the impression that the RSPCA is a xxxxxxxxxxxxxx of an organisation that xxxxxxxxxxxxx all over people’s xxxxxxxxxxx in order to xxxxxxxxxxxxx. But that’s another issue. After an initial panic, the GP surgery was very nice about my request and unlike the RSPCA they didn’t redact a thing. The receptionist handed me my medical notes in a bundle and sat me down in a deserted waiting room during lunchtime. She then sat herself at the far end of the room looking the other way to make sure I was supervised while not having my privacy invaded.