Finally, some good news! Actually, not just good, but live-alteringly wonderful! I have fulfilled the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) criteria and will be awarded higher care and higher mobility awards! It’ll be paid every 4 weeks and will be backdated to the 8th May! This means a big lump sum at the beginning! It also means I’m eligible for a free bus travel pass from the lovely Welsh Assembley Government and I have telephoned asking for a form to that end.
I’m just blown away. I didn’t know I’d qualify for higher rates of both care and mobility, but I really feel that my condition has been validated by the fact that I’ll be receiving those. Does that sound stupid? I really expected to have to fight more as most people have no idea about the traumas of having a painful Symphysis Pubis and the strain that it brings to your daily life and relationships. Now, when old people verbally abuse me on buses for sitting on the “save for disabled people and those with children” seats (yes, even though I have Michael, Henry and the pushchair with me) I will be able to whip out my bus pass and explain that I am disabled! Instead of having to weakly explain about my pains and subsequent painkillers.
In other news, new painkillers are making me sleep more hours of the day than I am awake – it might sound like a life to be in awe of but believe me when I tell you that simply is not the case. I hate every moment of Henry’s life that I miss, I hate my time without Michael and I HATE that Michael has to do EVERYTHING. I’m surprised he hasn’t collapsed into a heap and refused to move ever again.
Or worse, walked away.
In fact, he’s finally managing to get some sleep as the good news has buoyed my excitement levels to a level above “blah” and I don’t think I’ll accidentally fall asleep and wake up in agony to find Henry jumping on my pelvis. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not completely ruling it out as an option of things to come, I’m merely hoping that it won’t happen today. Or in the next hour, at least!
Off to the GP I go when I get my bus form, and also then I will ask for a letter to be sent to my consultant as I’ve still not had an appointment letter through since my MRI scan and injections nearly 6 weeks ago in May!
I’m on the Occupational Therapy waiting list, awaiting a letter to see how many months wait I am likely to have; the lovely woman I spoke to said the current list is 5 months, but it’s based on how much you need the help to a certain extent so she might be able to slot me in sooner as I’m struggling so much.
Henry is a menace to sofas from here to Babylon as he can now climb up them. There truly is no stopping our little intrepid explorer; I think I must have been much like him at the same age. In most ways, it’s wonderful to see him so full of life and movement, but in others I just want to cry for all that he reminds me of myself and how I wish I still was. Only with ever so slightly less drool. And more hair. And less of a delight with plugs and sockets….
