'Physician cure thyself’. The old adage. Never a great thing, a poorly doctor. No one likes to see that. Rhinorrohea, malaise, mild pharyngitis, conjunctival injection with epiphora?

Yes ladies and gentleman, I officially have man flu. And yes, I am a man who can admit to this.

However, not only that, I’ll even admit that while I am great at dishing out advice about health, I am – quite predictably – equally just as rubbish at taking any notice of it.

Luckily I do know that unless I do something daft (like try to run a marathon or go camping in November), the man flu will go away after about five days, come what may. However as we all know (and my family are only too keen to tell me), there are a lot more serious illnesses you can get than a cold. Which brings me on to the point – doctors get ill too. And we are not very good at it.

Ironic right? Of all the people in all the surgeries in all the world, the ones who are probably the worst at being ill and dealing it, are the GPs themselves. From medical school onward, there is a culture that doctors should not really be ill. Worse still, to actually admit to it unofficially is seen as a sign of weakness. In particular, stress related problems are, believe it or not, considered real taboo. Now, the usual way of dealing with this issue –among us doctors – is seen and labelled as the classic ‘ostrich response’. That is, we go and bury our heads in the sand.

The other problem that you see with doctors is that we then go to the other extreme – just like Woody Allen, we’ll suddenly find ourselves interpreting the smallest aches and pains as if anticipating the worst possible scenario. Remember, a lot of doctors know lots and lots about one part of the body, but only enough about other bits to think the worst. Indeed, it is often the most exotic, unusual illnesses that stick in your mind from medical school (and maybe that’s not a bad thing either). So, options are either to ignore something or become obsessed by it. And if you add to that the stigma about not being unwell, you’ve got to admit it doesn’t look good.

‘Physician cure thyself’ is a barb directed at Jesus in the Bible, but essentially gives an unofficial view of the world about sick doctors. That is, if your doctor is sick, can they really help you? Can they show an example to you? I hope these attitudes are changing because one of the worst things you can do when becoming unwell is continuing to do the thing that made you sick but just a bit more of it. In other words (and this applies to everyone really), the way to get past a brick wall isn’t to bash your head into it a bit harder than you were before.

So back to the man flu. Magically it seems to be gone and perhaps has left me a little more of a sympathetic doctor than I was a week ago. Only a cold, but sometimes I think it is helpful to remind us all that we are human too.

Dr. Joe McManners is an Oxford GP