Well, a great deal it seems, with Fibromyalgia. It means the difference between being able to buy food, medication and continue paying installments on your credit card, or, declaring yourself bankrupt.
My finances were in a precarious state, I had been ill for 6 months, living off my ever dwindling savings and couldn't see an end in sight. I had a diagnosis but was far from establishing the cause. I rang the Department for Work & Pensions to get some advice and they suggested that I make an application for Incapacity Benefit and Income Support; as I would probably be eligible for one or the other. However, this process would involve a telephone interview lasting about 45 minutes.
This was not a comfortable prospect; I could barely hold my toothbrush long enough to clean my teeth, let alone hold a telephone receiver, for 45 minutes - what an excruciating thought. I asked whether a family member could do the interview on my behalf, "No". I asked if a DWP representative could come and interview me at home, "No". What kind of a useless, unhelpful system is this? "Look", I said, "I can't guarantee that I will be able to get through a 45 minute phone call because I am not at all "well", which is why I am making this claim in the first place. Can you send me a form to fill-in?" "Yes", came the reply, "We will send you a form to fill-in but then we need to go over the answers that you have given on the form, during the telephone interview and input the information onto our computerised system. Obviously, we will ring at a time that is convenient for you. You'll have to spell fibro-mile-ja, I've never heard of that before". "Don't worry", I said, "it's news to me too".
"Remember", said the advisor, "you will need to get a sickness certificate from your Doctor, every 14 days, otherwise you will not receive your benefit; which is paid directly into your bank account". This was the only helpful sounding part of this process so far. I just had the impression that this benefits "lark"was going to cause me the sort of added headache that I could probably do without. It wasn't like I had a mortgage or 3 kids or a husband; but, it was bad enough. We all have personal financial situations and it is stressful which ever way you look at it when you are in a situation where you have had to give up work, indefinately; this is the worst part about it, not knowing how long the illness is going to last; months? years? and the possibility of becoming disabled and wondering how on earth you are going to get through life. The long and short of it was, I had bills to pay. So, i decided to break it all down into bite-size manageable pieces. The first step was to ring the surgery and get an appointment with Dr No 1; that coincided with a relatively good day - as opposed to a day when I was confined to bed - it's not like he is ever going to come out and visit me. You need to be bleeding to death for a Doctor's visit these days.
So, I rang the surgery...
(photo by snapdragon6 for "frou-frou" photography/copyright 2008)
