The Calm Before The Storm

All my creative juices have dried up doing my blog and I have been off the radar since I got the IB50. I have felt drained, stressed out, my confidence has drained out of me and I have been quite short tempered.

It is almost two weeks since I sent the IB50 back and so far I have heard nothing.

I am on brown envelope watch again dreading what comes through the post but so far all I have had is a few bills, the same free papers, leaflets for every different pizza, Chinese, Indian meals and any other crap that comes through my letterbox which I don't mind at the moment.

I imagine the DWP are just checking with my GP just to check that I still have a brain injury even though it is well documented and I did actually go and see the community psychiatric nurse [I think she's called a counsellor now] just recently about my anxiety and starting to feel depressed and that I wasn't making it all up. I could of easily of been on some medication to help but I did not take that option. Medication is an easy option but it doesn't always work.

I am quite anxious to what the outcome of what this review is. I have been thinking about all the possible outcomes. One of the outcomes is having to live off £55 a week on Jobseekers Allowance, signing on and having to go through the appeal process fills me with dread. Having had previous experience of this before so I know what to expect if it happens.

I remember when I used to work full-time in the day time and then work part-time in the evenings and compare it to now, I used to start at work at 8.30 in the morning and come home at 10.30pm in the evening. now I start at 9pm then come home at about 2pm from voluntary work and I feel exhausted, the rest of the afternoon is usually a write off as I try not to go to sleep. I can drink a cup of coffee when I get home and can still be asleep 20 minutes later, coffee, lucozade and red bull and these sort of things makes little or no difference. Nothing has changed in he last 14 years and I go some the same thing virtually every day and its very frustrating. In head injury terms I have reached a plateau and I ain't going to make a over night recovery. I reached this plateau a long time ago.

I have been talking to some people about my situation with the IB50 and the possible outcomes and they can't believe what I have to go through just to prove that I have an acquired disability.

I don't even know how long I am supposed to wait now to find out or do I just wait for another brown envelope or a phone call out of the blue. Perhaps I will get the brown envelope tomorrow on my birthday what a fun day that will be.

I read this blog today and I found it very annoying as it is tarring all incapacity benefit claimants with the same brush and not looking at the actual facts.

http://www.loughboroughecho.net/views-and-blogs/matt-jarram-column/2008/08/21/time-called-on-benefit-claimants-73871-21577374/

I reckon he has been taking lessons from James Purnell. Perhaps he ought to try being me for a couple of years and see how he gets on. I have have better aspirations than working at McDonald's and clearing up other peoples crap. More about them later and one of there employees attitude towards a disabled employee.

I feel there has been some sort of conspiracy where all this type of thing keeps appearing in the media attacking Incapacity Benefit claimants, there was the panaroma episode about benefit claimants, the DWP/Government programme On the Fiddle, every other day there is something in the newspapers about benefit scroungers or fraud cases. then there is things about the new pathways to work or rather pathways to hell. I found this quite shocking: http://a-i-darlo.com/wordpress/?p=55

Why doesn't some someone do something sensible to help rather than claimants be prodded with a cattle prod and the usual threats against claimants. It doesn't exactly motivate me to rush out and try and get a job and it doesn't work.

I would love to have a 42" HD tv and a Nintendo Wii but I have other responsibilities to attend to like where is my next lot of money coming from?.