Work, identity and health

Personal introduction Having free-lanced as a public health physician for over a decade, with the inevitable variation in both the avaiIability and type of work, 'retirement' is, perhaps, a vaguer concept than for those with conventional full time jobs. In my middle sixties, I was drifting towards retirement, thinking that I should soon refuse any new work, when an incident occurred quite unconnected with work. Many have experienced being treated by someone with utter contempt, but a dramatic confrontation in which I was made to feel a worthless 'nothing' forced me to reflect on my immediate future, my social status in retirement, and the importance of work. I abandoned thoughts of full retirement and took up new research commitments, having concluded that, for me, it was important to be a 'something', whatever that 'something' was.