Scrounger?

OK so there seems to be a thing about people falsely claiming benefits.

I can only talk for me. On a good or rather better day you will see me out on motorbike that to be honest is easier than driving a car and does me more physical good. My specialists tell me to ride as much as I can because it keeps me moving without any major effort. I do hurt getting on and off but whilst riding my thoughts are not often on the pain. I don’t have to lift my bike up nor has any got a kick start. I press a button. Without my bike I would be more isolated and anxious and likely would never leave my home at all.

On my better days I am not without pain I just am managing it better and yes can hide it too. No one likes someone sitting with them crying or groaning so I try not to.

On my not so good days I need my crutches or a stick. Mostly you will not see me then unless I have managed to get to a shop.

On the bad days I need a wheelchair which an OT assessment provided. You will definitely not see me then. On my Truly bad days I remain in bed in excruciating pain crying, writhing and yes screaming.

All my illnesses are invisible and you will rarely see the effects of them on me because we learn very well to hide them.

So what can make me have to endure such pain?
My diagnosed illnesses are:
1 Fibromyalgia
2 Crohs disease
3 Diabetes on insulin (part of the cause of my       brothers death in December)
4 COPD
5 SVT of the heart
6 Angina
7 Anxiety and Depression
8 PTSD
9 Asthma
10 Neuropathy
11 Retinopathy
12 first Bite Syndrome
13 Hypertension – hig blood pressure

I could give a list of drugs. Dietary needs. Mobility issues. Embarrassing side effects. I could describe how the Anxiety and Depression make me want to die, but how now even that choice has been taken from me. How I cannot face people at times, I cannot keep many friendships because I can’t face folk. How the constant chronic pain which even Morphine and Oxy have no effect upon drives you to screaming despair, how u cannot plan hour to hour never mind day to day or week to week. I could I for. You of the inability to see any future, the knowledge I am unemployable because on top of all this I get brain fog and now flash backs that can come at any time and destroy me there and then.

I could tel you that everytime I go anywhere I am at risk of soiling myself. That I carry a card to beg leave to use a loo in a shop when desperate, or that I might need to wee every few minutes when my sugars are high.
I could try to explain how I can collapse suddenly or even pass out if SVT is bad. My normal or usual pulse rate is 98 it can go to 200.

I could explain this all and more like the side effects of diabetes causing the need for circumcision, the loss of sensation, the loss of libido, interest.

I could go on and on, with things like muscle deterioration that means I cannot do most things I enjoyed doing, cannot walk distance, cannot hike or rock climb. I cannot canoe any more. I can’t even undo nuts or bolts. Some days can’t bloody dress myself.

I need a heightened toilet which means often I spill, causing the need to bath or shower 3 to four times a day.

When I do get out if on crutches or stick I risk being physically attacked. It’s happened 4 times and not once dis I get support from the police or Courts.

Now you are not my doctors. If I had not told you all this you would never see it. You might even now not believe it.

Before I got ill I had a career with very good wages, prospects and I more importantly had self pride, self worth and yes a reason to get up and be here. I made a difference. I did not give that up to live of nothing without any value to myself never mind society.

Again you may not believe it for its my life not yours. You are just reading these words, I am not sadly just writing them I am living them.

So before you judge folk and call them scroungers, ask yourself what is their life, what’s their story. If they were in plaster or had limbs removed you might have sympathy, but because they look OK Al you see is ‘Scrounging waste of air scum’. Well if that’s true of you please feel free to live my life. Because rto be honest I would give everything to live as I did. Everything, but sadly I cannot.

Please think before you accuse and I promise no one would choose to be sick, vulnerable or disabled in British Society today.