[Ccddfergt]

My Girlfriend and I went for an ESA appeal yesterday before a Judge and a Doctor,
Despite being what I would describe as "severely ill", they have thrown out her appeal and thus stopped all our benefits, including our housing benefit.

So not only do we now not have anything to live on, we are also in serious danger of losing our Flat too.
We both attended an ATOS medical, where the "day to day" aspects of her life were ripped apart by the Nurse who wasn't even fully trained to diagnose her full list of illnesses/ailments.

The ATOS medical requires that you score 15 points or more to ensure that they don't stop your benefits,
yet when we did a self-assessment with an independent benefits advisor, my girlfriend scored over 80 points.
So I can't see how they failed her and deemed her fit to work at the appeal hearing.

Even though I myself have CFS/ME and Fibromyalgia, and I've begged her to let me return to work, as I could probably get a security job within a few weeks (even though I feel like utter sh!t most of the time with the fatigue etc), She has stated that if I do return to work they will then expect we to go back to work Full time and that would be impossible at the moment, Not only because of my ongoing health problems, but because she is so ill that I am literally her carer at present as she suffers from Seizures too and they cause her to lose all sense of reality for several minutes at a time, The chances are very high for me coming home from any job and finding her having had a seizure whilst showering or making a coffee etc means that I could come home and find her laying on the bathroom floor half-dead or having scalded herself with the kettle etc.

So for the foreseeable future, me returning to work is a very last resort, until such time that the Seizures are fully investigated and a suitable medication
Prescribed that controls them or she has a carer who comes in and either looks after her or checks up on her whilst I was working.

The Illnesses/Ailments she currently has are: CFS/ME,Fibromyalgia, Cluster headaches(can last anywhere from 1-24 hours), Pelvic congestion syndrome,
Tietze syndrome, Severe IBS, Very,Poor circulation, Severe depression and some other problems I'm not going to go into (too personal).

I keep telling her that if she was a Horse, they would have shot her by now.

Anyway, She has this list of things wrong with her and yet they deemed her fit for work, I seriously don't remember a day in the last 1.5 years that we've been together that she hasn't had something that has been painful in someway or hasn't impeded on her "day to day" life in some way or another.

Her IBS is so severe that originally her Doctor thought it was Crohn's disease, as when (on the odd occasion) she actually has a normal bowel movement, she bleeds profusely, and as you can imagine this is very stressful for her and myself (I'm worried sick for her), And the loss of blood makes her weak, (well, weaker than normal).

So how the hell she is expected to hold down a full time or even part time job, whilst juggling her frequent visits to the Doctors (1-3 times a week),
Her Neurologist appointments (about the seizures), as well as frequent rest breaks, toilet visits etc, is anyone's guess, because no sane employer would dare to take her on at present.
(Although she would love to return to work, if only to regain her self-respect).

So today we've spent most of it phoning around and trying to find out information on what we do now, where we go from here.

We're going to try for a Crisis loan as what we've been living on over the last year is just about enough to live on, let alone save anything for a rainy day.

My fathers helping as much as he can and the TV and probably the g/f's laptop is going tomorrow to help pay the rent (the laptop was my old one and a present to her), and anything else
that will get us any money, she's adamant that my water cooled PC will be the very last thing to go, as she understands what it means to me, I'd rather sell a kidney than part with it tbh.

My car is the second to last thing on the list to go, as we've discussed it already and without a car we'd be f*cked for getting around as a return ticket for both of us to the doctors is the same cost
as what I put into the car each week in diesel.

Besides she's already said that worst come to worst, she'd rather keep the car and sleep in a tent, as long as she still has me in her life, that's all that matters to her.

If your all wondering why I'm with this woman as she doesn't have the best quality of life at the moment, its because she helped drag me back from the brink of severe depression back in April 2011 and I literally owe my life to her, at that time I was under severe stress in my job, my family and friends were totally unsympathetic about my illness, And I'd contemplated suicide on more than one occasion.

My last resort (before I took my life) was at that time, the internet, and I sought out an online forum for CFS/ME sufferers as I felt that my illness was beating me and that I didn't feel life
was worth living anymore, as I felt so alone and felt that I had an impossible climb ahead of me in trying to get some quality of life.

On that forum, I posted something, and my Fiancee, was one of the first people who replied, She told me that she knew where I was coming from, but that she was a fighter and a survivor and
she urged me to keep on fighting and facing each day, even though she knew from her own symptoms that I was in much pain, and also that her own family and friends, had virtually dismissed the illness
as being "all in the head", so she knew what it felt to be all alone and fighting for her illness to be recognized and taken seriously.

I guess she was the shining light that I needed in the sea of darkness that I was in.

Through a combination of texting, phone calls and then through sharing our facebook profiles, we built up a friendship, and upon deciding to meet one day, back in July of 2011, Love blossomed and
we haven't spent more than a day apart since then, She is my "rock" and I am hers, that is why we are in this until the end and will keep on fighting to get the Justice that we both deserve.

And I think I we do deserve some, as I've spent nigh on 28 years paying taxes into this goddamn country and now I want something back.