IT HAS BEEN a worrying business, watching My Good Lady slowly recovering from the mauling she received by the so-called “doctor” at the medical review for the DLA.
But recovering she slowly is, I’m pleased to see – with something of her normal openness and warmth beginning to re-emerge.
But there’s no two ways about it, applying for benefits is a bit like getting into the water with sharks.
The medical exams are almost universally dreaded.
Unless you have an obvious and easily diagnosed disability – something like Parkinson’s or motor neurone – you are treated with a degree of sneering scepticism that borders on abuse.
The questions that they ask ignore any context in which any meaningful answers can be made.
They like all the answers to be either yes or no, all the boxes neatly ticked.
The actual physical examination is so perfunctory as to be virtually unrevealing even to an expert, let alone to a common-or-garden benefits agency medic.
Hardly a surprise, then, that MGL came away feeling that nothing she had tried to say had been taken into account – we were both trembling, she with despair, me with futile anger.
We are both slowly recovering – although we’re still dreading what the result of this “medical” will be.
1 comment:
The difference is: you can swim with sharks and be left unharmed!
One generally leaves these medicals in worse health than one enters - regardless of the outcome.
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