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Well, although I don’t know what direction this post is going to end in, I did say I would post about my recent Personal Independence Payment assessment meeting. So here it is…
The questions weren’t that bad, but it’s hard not to feel judged when you know what you’re saying does sound fundamentally a bit crazy. Now I am back in a bit of a rational mind, I can see I probably shouldn’t have accused this woman of storing human heads in her fridge. But more about that later. Lets start at the start. My appointment was held in the back room of a health centre, which is apparently what they’ve changed the name of gyms to. So here I am, haven’t showered in a few, building up to expose all of my brain to a complete stranger and I’m surrounded by the glowing, healthy people who embrace gym-life. Great.
I’m not sure whether the room was hot, but I was sweating and when I asked Neil he said the temperature was “alright” so interpret that as you may. The lady who was doing my assessment was very soft spoken, like she had just emerged from the health centres spa herself! Her questions where standard, how do I do this? How does that make you feel? I can’t really remember how I answered but I know I got upset. I cried, but hell, I cry all the time. Not a big deal. It’s hard chewing up everything you wish you could change about yourself to a complete stranger with the elephant in the room of money.
The ones that I remember are, “would you have came today if you had to come by yourself”. I answered No, unfortunately she followed up with a why. This is when I told her that you seem nice, but you could be storing human heads in your fridge. To her credit, she seemed un-offended. Her follow up was “would you go somewhere on your own if you knew no one else would be there?”. What kind of question is that? Would you go into a forest alone if everyone told you no one was in there? That’s how I heard her question and I no longer felt like the only mad one in the room. I answered no, I don’t know that no ones there, neither do you. We don’t know. We’ll never know. Maybe I do have an intolerance of the unknown.
So, Am I Disabled?
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I guess that’s what it comes down to, money. Getting a price put on the worth of my illness. How sick is sick enough to get financial help. I can work some days, but we all know some days don’t pay the rent. Do I feel I deserve the money? That’s a whole blog post in itself, what do I think I deserve… I’m not sure. I guess we’ll find out in four to six weeks.