Tag Archives: DLA

Jan 08 2018
4 Comments
Emotions

May You Live In Interesting Times …

cookieI always thought this was a Chinese blessing, not a curse.

I think we’re all living in, um, interesting times. From the global (will we be blown up tomorrow?) to the local (will my MS nurse understand my latest ramblings?).

I had an MS nurse-led appointment on the 3rd January and I told her everything. Which is quite unlike me; I’m usually, ‘yeah, I’m fine. Huh? MS? Oh, yeah, it’s all good.’

After the initial shock of diagnosis all those years ago, I’m savvy. Or perhaps not. I hold it all in. I consult my notebook, mention ‘significant symptoms’, ‘potential relapses’, etc and then say, ‘that was lovely, thank you very much’.

Not this time though, and I even came close to … tears. My lovely MS nurse said to me, ‘… it seems to me like this, the PIP forms, are the last straw of everything you’ve been through and all the fights you’ve had?’

Yes, yes and yes again.

Every single person, whether they are healthcare professionals or people with MS and/or other neurological disorders all say the same – if you strip someone back to what they cannot do, after years in which they have adapted and overcome obstacles, you are merely increasing the despair and anxiety of formerly positively active people.

So where does that leave me now?

In the wee small hours, I am absolutely petrified. Towards morning, I’m calmer. During the day, I laugh it off. Until it starts again. The ramifications of this single benefit, PIP, are huge.

I hate to bring politics into it, but when I’m only asking to continue working and staying on the poverty line, it would be churlish not to?

Theresa May’s ridiculous decision to call a snap-election was solved by spending over a billion on harnessing the DUP voting power.

A billion. Like *that*.

Oh, and we’re the scroungers Mrs May?

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Dec 06 2017
6 Comments
Emotions

MS Is Curable – Just Ask the DWP

curedYes, surprisingly, MS has been cured for a third of us!

Surely we should be dancing and/or shuffling/stumbling in the street?

Well, no. MS is, and always has been, incurable. Degenerative. Progressive.

So far. Who knows what the future holds? And I pray for a cure.

Until then, we get on with our lives. Or so I thought.

We bring up our kids, we go to work, we engage in society. We may have to fight the odd unfair dismissal from work tribunal, but we still pick ourselves up and continue on. We live lives that slowly encroach upon what is ‘normal’ for our age-group. We give up stuff. We manage.

For me, one of the advantages of DLA was that I was able to access higher rates of Housing Benefit and Working Tax Credit. If I lose PIP, I will lose those also.

DLA basically pays for me to go to work. As it stands, I am already living well below the poverty line. To lose DLA will effectively render me homeless, as no-one can live on minus £75 a month, after the standard bills have been paid.

I’ve heard stories, from friends of friends, of people who don’t work as it’s not worth it. Yet we don’t all have work-place pensions or critical illness cover. For me, as long as I can, I will always choose work over the alternative. I don’t care if I earn the same or less than staying at home – work is banter, it’s real world and it’s choosing to live, as long as am I able to.

I have until Christmas Eve (lol) to send my PIP forms back, and then I think I will have a decision within 12-16 weeks.

Not a long time to plan for any alternative?

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Dec 04 2017
14 Comments
Emotions

I’m Better Than This …

miracleThe PIP forms have almost broken me down.

Shattering my psyche into tiny squared-off questions after years spent building myself up again has been incredibly difficult.

I’ve taken over a week off work; I’ve been virtually alone for eight days now. Apart from the cat and her various friends.

And that’s pretty tragic?

I watched the film ‘Wild’ two days ago, and although I haven’t trekked the Pacific Crest Trail for hundreds of miles, I did so in my mind.

When I’m upset, I hibernate, preferring to look my worst in the mirror and not to the outside world.

It’s a bit like a pity-party for one (and a half). It’s torturous.

Today – day 9 – I went to a short MS Society meeting less than two miles from my house. Safe.

Long story short, the support I had was amazing but people wondered where the real me had gone. Probably still on my sofa wondering how to dispose of the latest dead mouse outside my door and how best to fill in my PIP forms.

The real me?

All the PIP drama is akin to the employment tribunal of 2012; he said, they said, you’re lying. Analyse every single tiny little thing.

As someone said to me in the meeting today, yes, I am better than that, no matter the outcome.

Is the real me in there somewhere?

There’s definitely the old me, bubbling somewhere under the surface, but until the very real financial predicaments are put to bed, I may very well be the grumpy aunt at the Christmas festivities.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas and all the promise it offers. It’s a magical time, and perhaps that is why I am praying for a miracle?

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Dec 01 2017
4 Comments
Emotions

Beggar In Disbelief

beggarThese PIP (Personal Independent Payment) forms really do beggar belief.

I’ve finally finished a first draft to all the questions and I am an utter wreck.

To steal (may as well, nothing to lose) a phrase from Simon Cowell, ‘it’s been an emotional journey.’ But there’s no z-list stardom and a double-page spread in ‘Heat’ magazine at the end of it.

Perhaps ‘traumatic’ would be a more adequate word, because it really is. I’m sure they probably do a similar tactic when you join the SAS; breaking you down until you’re snivelling on the ground. But then! You rise up, invincible, ready to take on the world.

However, in my case, the opposite is true. They’ve broken me down. And that’s it.

I’ve taken a week off work to fill in the forms and because I’ve got a pesky MS flare-up plus a rotten, stinking cold. I’ve got a Rudolph nose, and am running out of tissues and energy.

The more I read, both in the media and in online forums, about people with MS having to go through this unnecessary process yet again the more angry I become. To put it this way, I work, and I receive Working Tax Credit, to allow me to live above the poverty line. I fill in a fairly basic form every year, stating my wages and that’s pretty much it.

However, with PIP forms, to receive additional money to pay for the extra costs attributed to disability (one like MS, as yet incurable and as yet, degenerative) I have to literally bare my soul – and my bottom.

Yep, for those unfamiliar with these forms, there’s a whole section on going to the loo. And another about personal hygiene, i.e. how well you can wash yourself.  Are disabled people really reduced to these facile benchmarks?

A single form to cover every single possible disability ever recorded is ludicrous.

According to Scope, there are 13.3 million disabled people in the UK, all filling in the same form, but all expected to depict their own unique disability experience within it.

Further, you spend £550 a month per average more if you are disabled. Which is the very reason this benefit exists. And for doubters out there, disability benefit fraud is 0.5%. The lowest level of any ‘benefit’.

Makes you wonder how much is siphoned away in tax evasion?

Jus’ sayin’…

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Nov 17 2017
10 Comments
Daily Life

Stand Up, Get Knocked Back Down Again – And Repeat

knockedI had an ‘interesting’ taxi ride yesterday afternoon.

The Boss has picked me up for work every morning since early this year, when my symptoms made it too difficult to drive.

Almost a year on, it’s become the norm, which takes a huge amount of pressure off me, yet another adaptation that has slid into my life almost unnoticed.

After a bit of training, he makes sure there’s a fresh coffee in my little cup-holder, and if I’m lucky, a croissant or bacon sarnie.

Anyway, yesterday the job ran over and The Boss arranged a taxi to get me home which I fell into gratefully.

Until the conversation, which went something like this:

‘Been busy today?’

‘Yeah, lots of calls, but most of them for so-called disabled people, I drive them to their assessments? What a joke. Malingerers, the lot of ’em.’

‘Well, some of us do work? Like me?’

‘Yeah, but most of them, they look … normal? Nothing wrong with ’em. And there’s me, working 60-70 hours a week, slogging my guts out, to fund them? I mean, there’s something seriously wrong with the system?’

‘Yeah, but I work?’

‘Not the point, is it? Honestly, you should see them, prancing around, then well upset when they don’t get their benefits. Benefits? Free-loaders, the lot of ’em. And there’s me …’

This went on for fourteen miles. Nothing I said would convince him to see the other side of the debate. He’d read his newspapers and was ‘well-informed’.

It wasn’t only disabled people; students were another pet-hate; ‘four of ’em in my taxi – a quid each to go to town?? I mean, they gotta get used to real life, but they’re living it up like kings at university.’

His views to one side, this was a chilling reminder of the wider view of what people like us have to put up with, especially in light of being reassessed for PIP. Not only do we encounter the DWP rock-face, we also face a monumental societal challenge.

You would think, with such a serious illness as MS, we were somehow ‘protected’ from this bile. A verifiable, quantifiable, certifiable illness? Not a chance. We were all one and the same.

When I got back home, I grabbed the cat and went straight to bed. It’s the best place to be right now and I seem to be going earlier and earlier. It’s the only place I can be at peace.

I’ve been knocked down many times – most significantly in 2011 when MS blasted onto the scene, then the diagnosis in 2012 and my subsequent sacking. You get knocked down. You stand up. You take another blow. Partner’s left? Blam. Income dropped? Blam. You get knocked down. You stagger up again.

How many times can you get knocked down? Just when I think I have created a world that works for me, it’s destroyed. And this happens over and over again.

MS is bad enough, but the DWP should really have their own disease/illness classification – ‘DWPitis’ – : symptoms include:

  • Hopelessness
  • Fear of the future
  • Anxiety/panic attacks
  • Destitution
  • Increase in existing illness symptoms
  • All of the above x 10

And just when I think things can’t get any worse, The Teenager texted me yesterday to inform me he’s applied to be on ‘Love Island’…

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