I woke up this morning, not happy as I should have been as it’s our wedding anniversary, but feeling sick. It wasn’t a sick that came from my health, it was the sick that I know all too well, the one that comes from worry. All that has been on my mind since yesterday evening is tomorrow’s meeting, with the person who will be carrying out, my PIP examination. If you look at the advice and description supplied by the government, it is nothing more than a friendly chat about how your health affects you. Having already given them all of that in writing, well you would think that would be that, but no, they want to come and talk to you about it. Does that mean they will offer more help? No, well not according to the reports that I have been reading left by others who have gone through it. It just means they are going to assess you, and look for ways to take away your benefits, that I for one, have now had for 13 years. That, of course, is what worries me.

Like anyone else who has been ill long time, that money really matters and really makes the difference between just surviving and living. To take away over £300 a month from anyone is like cutting their arm off. Part of me says, of course, it will go alright. It must be clear to anyone with eyes that I am ill, that I am a person who genuinely can’t get a job due to my health. But when you hear of people who died one week after being told they weren’t entitled to a single penny, you can’t help but fear the worst. I also read a post yesterday which stated that despite giving permission for your medical records to be seen, they don’t actually request anything, it all down to how the claimant appears, to a totally nonmedical person. The who thing is sounding more and more like a farce the more that I read, so I have stopped. I have come to the conclusion, that there is little that I can do, other than be myself and just hope that, it goes the way I need it to. Oddly, although I know that stressing about it isn’t going to help me, in a funny way, it just might. Without a doubt, the more stressed that I am, the worse my health plays up. If I keep stressing about it, by tomorrow morning, I will be a mess. I will be stuttering, forgetting my word and twitching like a lunatic, all of which might just go in my favour.

Sometime’s I think that the systems that are set up, not just by this government, are set up to make our lives harder not easier. If they really want to know just how ill we are, why don’t they just talk to our doctors? When I was first ill and applied for benefits, I remember that we were attending a support group at the time for those newly diagnosed with MS. I was there with some people who were clearly as ill, if not worse than I was. My claim went through without the slightest difficulty, they were fighting having already been refused at least once. The fairness of any system is always judged by its results. I don’t think that system was anymore fair than this one is. Back then, it was all done by filling in forms, there was no assessment, so it was open to being claimed by those who didn’t deserve it. All I know was that I found myself sitting there feeling guilty. Why had I been granted this money, when they hadn’t? I could see no logic behind it and every time we attended, the guilt appeared all over again. You simply can’t win, you will be made to pay for it in one way or another.

Nothing in this life of mine has seemed to have gone easily. The main problem I have always had, is I feel too much. My mother used to say that I thought too much, something I don’t think is possible, and says a lot more about her, than it does about me. We have to think about life, not just ours but everyone else’s as well. Without a doubt, should everything go well tomorrow, should I be one of the lucky ones, who gets a letter in the near future saying that I have been awarded whatever sum they choose, I will once more will feel guilty, just because I’ve done a little reading. Whatever the system, there are winners and losers, I accept that, but only when there is a level playing field and the starting blocks are even in the first place. Systems, no matter how they are set up, are never fair, for one simple reason, the playing field is never level. When dealing with people, that is an impossibility. Knowing that, doesn’t make the slightest difference as to how I feel.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 25/04/2014 – One more meal

I ate more last night than I would usually eat in three days and it’s not finished, I seem to have almost as much still sitting in the fridge to be consumed today. I suppose we all have eyes bigger than our stomachs but no matter how much I enjoyed my dinner there is one thing I know without a doubt, I couldn’t eat like that more than once a month and even then I would probably only have about half. I don’t know what it is about eating, but I just don’t have the a great interest in it, something I never suffered from in the past, I was like everyone else was happy to eat whatever was there to eat, I always had what most would call a proper meal once day, even when I was alone I still made the effort to cook, because I loved doing it and eating it. Last night I ordered a 10-inch pizza, some onion rings, and mozzarella sticks, and some Indian desserts…..