Welcome to the hidden costs of being sick.

Since I became too ill to work just before Christmas last year, I have been struggling to get by on Incapacity Benefit and Housing Benefit. Because I have been ill so long (I've now been out of work most of 11 months) I am entitled to around £70 a week Incapacity Benefit. I feel like a lottery winner!

Waltham Forest Council still expected me to magically contribute around £20 a week of this money towards my rent. I blame Harry Potter.

That leaves £50 a week to live on, including bills. Food prices have risen so much that a shop to Sainsbury's costs around £10 per for food and essentials (and I often only eat one proper cooked meal a day, the rest of the time I eat cereal, jam and bread or some fruit).

I managed to pay my credit card interest for the first 8 months of my illness with help from my last wages and my overdraft. After that I had to ask for help. I had heard of a 'payment holiday' where you could freeze interest payments until you returned to work (although it turns out, you still have to find some money... in my case £25 a month).

When I asked Barclaycard for a payment holiday, they told me I had sickness insurance and sent out a form to fill in. To prove I am really ill, my doctor has to fill in and stamp one page of the form. While this process is ongoing, Barclaycard still threatened me with the bailiffs, despite being insured with ... you guessed it... Barclaycard.

I sent the form to my GP becuase I still have trouble walking after having had cancer and then bowel surgery. I received a call saying that my GP had lost the form and besides, my GP liked to fill in the form while I was at the surgery (I would soon discover why). So I would have to get another form and make an appointment.

My GP is so successful that he has been able to open a new surgery even further away, but not on a tube or bus route from my house. He now spends little time at the old surgery I'm registered with.

I made my appointment with another doctor in the surgery and was toldby him to leave the form at reception and they would pass it on to my doctor who would fill it in. I was then told by the receptionist I would have to pay £20 for this service.

'That can't be right,' I said. 'Isn't the doctor paid by the NHS?' (I thought GPs receive around £100,000 per year salary nowadays.)

'Besides, ' I added, 'if I had any money I wouldn't be going through this process of trying to get financial help.'

I was told by the receptionist that she was only doing her job and I shouldn't take it out on her. Very true. Maybe not so true was the way a patient was told to leave because he complained that there was no light in the windowless toilets (I knew already, I had been also). This guy was registered at the new surgery office and was told to go complain to them! Incredible!! I thought this was a service and that facilties like going to the toilet were a legal necessity - mmm, maybe not?

The guy was only trying to help at any rate. Wouldn't they want to know that a bulb needed replacing? You would think he hadn't threatened her children. I thought if he had asked for tiolet roll they might have called the police.

Anyway, having thought overnight about my doctor's £20 fee, I called up the GP to ask what had happened to my form. I said if my GP was happy to take nearly a third of my weekly benefit money, I would find him £20 somehow when I receive my next benefit payments.

It is unfair to assume he will charge me.Maybe he won't. Maybe it was a misunderstanding.

This may be a charge only to people who work regularly or recently, not for people who have scraped by on benefits for 11 months. And anyway isn't it normal for doctors to charge for holiday immunisations and the like? It isn't unprecendented.

Despite all this, I can't help feeling that after being the victim of bank fraud recently, I am about to be mugged again.