12 Minutes …

For many of us going through the DLA to PIP process, it’s a devastating slide into everything we never wanted to face.

What can’t you do. And why?

After years of muddling through, re-adapting, making concessions for MS, we have to admit our endless ‘shortcomings’. Our failings.

We realise, sometimes with a huge thud, just what we can’t do. I plunged into a deep depression, because I actually thought I was doing ok, bar walking into walls and falling asleep at the slightest opportunity.

My forms took weeks to fill in. Painstaking. Personal, hideously personal. Numerous extra pages of ‘Cont. Info’ were included.

48 pages in all. Basically, my entire life in one document.

As a birthday present last week, a huge pile of tribunal papers arrived along with cards and flowers. Nice touch.

Buried in amongst over a hundred pages, I discovered that my form had a ‘considered/writing up time’ of 12 minutes.

I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty impressive. To read a compressed life with MS, all 48 pages, plus consider them and write a response in 12 minutes is speedy by anyone’s standard. Bearing in mind it’s not a new claim, but a transition from a lifetime award for DLA.

The result?

A face-to-face consideration was required. Which happened – apparently – although neither me nor my witness recognise the meeting she refers to. And this ‘health care professional’ appears to have the upper hand in my forthcoming tribunal.

Her ‘evidence’ is the ‘truth’. She was here, in my house, for 50 minutes in total. That includes losing her way (my mum directed her on the phone), coming in, setting up her laptop, talking to me (without looking at me), packing up and leaving.

It appears my entire tribunal rests upon her ‘clinical’ finding and ‘observations’.

I’m impressed.

To destroy someone’s life in 50 minutes is bad enough, but the lead-in took 12.

I am that insignificant. All my pain, my symptoms, my life being turned on its head. Not only that, the end of my planned future, being sacked from work, the endless relapses, the invasive treatments I’ve had. Not to mention their side-effects (hello, Fatty-Puff-Me).

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the person who knows me and my MS probably better than most, my wonderful MS nurse, cannot write a statement for the tribunal. Aside from the logistical nightmare that this would cause for the under-funded department, they have been ‘told’ by the DWP that their evidence is ‘meaningless’ and ‘patient-directed’ so therefore inadmissible.

So I face a tribunal based almost solely upon evidence of someone who does not know me, triggered by someone in an office who does not know me.

Ok.

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12 thoughts on “12 Minutes …

  1. Christina Martin says:

    Oh my god same same I had a useless person who knew nothing I took Doctors letters medication etc all proof I had she on taking my money off me decided I was not on enough!!!!!!!!
    And could put my glasses on with out help so it’s a no I want go on
    I have appealed again let’s see

    • stumbling in flats says:

      It’s shocking.
      My ‘assessor’ barely looked at me, yet explained that I was ‘happy and engaged’.
      I’m not fighting for more money, I’m fighting against my assessment. x

  2. Carina Muss says:

    Happy (belated) Birthday wishes!🎂🍾
    I am a firm believer that justice prevails in the end…..
    Good luck and sunny greetings from Brighton😎!

  3. Christina Martin says:

    Me too I don’t want to fight it but my family disgusted with how I been treated, I did not get told the money would have stopped went bank and was overdrawn apparently it had stopped 6 weeks earlier, I am lucky I have a husband who works he’s always been able to help with everything, it’s causing problems he’s worried about stress etc affects as you will understand,
    I just find it very very degrading.
    My doctor ready to help on next stage but I am not .
    Just want it finished x

    • stumbling in flats says:

      What you are going through sounds absolutely horrific, and you should not be made to feel this way.
      I really, really hope you are being supported through this process? X

  4. Joan (Devon) says:

    I am not going through this process because of my age, but it seems to me that the DWP is another disability you’re having to fight. Good luck to all of you who are having to deal with this.

  5. Donna Taylor says:

    B*****d Tories.

    🙁

    Hugs (())

    (10 months since my ESA appeal, still waiting)

    • stumbling in flats says:

      Thank you! I think my tribunal will be November, so 13 months after this whole ghastly process started 🙁 X

  6. Hi,

    The whole process is a basket of lies and deceipt designed to wear you down until fight is no longer an option. I have just started the journey and the omens are not good. Asked for assessors report after face to face interview Instead I receive bland notification that the DWP are now ready to make a decision.

    A potential life changing decision will be made by a bureaucratic ignorant twit. Smetimes I wish purgatory and damnation existed

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