Atos bloody Atos.

So you hear about these people on the news. You have heard the stories, the injustice, the deaths, the hardship they and the department of work and pensions course. Some of us are living it.
This is my story.

It starts the way all horror stories start with a form that could send an Amazonion rain forest into freefall. People sometimes say they can remember where they were when Kennedy was shot, well i remember where i was when this thing came crashing through my letterbox. I remember the gut wrenching panic of the brown envelope. I remember it took me a week to fill it out. Everytime i picked up a pen i felt physically sick. none of the questions they asked had anything to do with me or anything about my illness. Was i a fraud ? Maybe i was the only fraud that didn't know how to " Play the system?" . well i sent it back and tried to ignore the fact that sometime another letter thing would invade my home this time with an appointment on it. Sure enough about a month or two after i got another lovely letter saying that they wanted me to come for a medical assessment. They even sent a badly designed map to show me how lost i could actually get. Luckily the place i was going to wasn't horrendously far. Only one bus there and one back. For someone who doesn't travel well on her own to familiar places let alone somewhere new this was of small comfort.
I went. I spent my bus journey crammed nose to the window muttering to myself reminding myself how many stops i had to go. Even then i missed the stop and had to walk back, retracing the steps i hadn't taken before. so i made it all the way up the three flights of stairs past the big untidy scary looking pitbull of a security guard and into an over heated waiting room. I waited there for an hour and a half untill i was seen. By this time i was mentally shutting down, high alert has been replaced by a need to sleep and shut it all out. It was too hot and i was the only one there on my own without a family member, advocate or social worker there with me. Well i must be ok i got there all by myself.
the actual assessment took a whole TWELVE yes twelve minutes. Of course you can gauge someones mental state in that time can't you? And when you are tucked behind a computer screen the size of a forty two inch tv, and firing questions like;
"How often do you wash?"
"Where do you do your shopping."
"Who comes to your house?"
"Can you cook for your son?"
the little matter of eye contact and actually observing the person sitting hunched over in a seat that has been placed right in the middle of a room with barred windows seems somewhat over rated doesn't it.
And breath.
 So that was assessment number one.
In the grand  tradition of the eurovision I scored a grand total of nil, zero, ziltch, not a fucking sausage nothing. I was effectively screwed. so i appealed. i had no choice i phoned them as soon as i got the letter. all my income had stopped. It was November at this point. Luckily the fluffy one at that time was spending most of his time with his dad. His dad could afford to feed him. I on the other hand had a bout fifteen pounds to my name and a choice of food or heat. I spent a lot of the time wearing at least two jumpers and wrapping myself in a blanket for warmth while fighting the council who were now asking for money and the dept collectors who were doing the same.
I stopped taking my medication. What was the point i asked myself. i stopped sleeping, spent hours wrapped in a bundle of despair on the sofa. I felt alone i was alone really, days of never venturing outside, not changing my clothes, not really functioning waiting for the next thing to hit. It's what you do when things happen that rock your world and the one place you feel truly safe is the one thing that people are trying to take away from you.
It was six weeks before i was paid any money again, i coped i think just. I had to write to them telling them how and why i was appealing. They had sent me a file of my assessment. It was the best piece of fiction i had ever read. I hadn't told them any of what they had written in their paper. In fact the most worrying thing about it all was that along with my information was someone elses assessment information. They had in fact put the two of them together and then sent it all to me. My five page letter of the how's and the why's of why they had got it all so wrong was sent off and then came the wait for my tribunal date.

I did think that i would be able to write the whole of this story as one blog but as i write this i realize that i need to go away clear my thoughts and come back. So this is part one of my story, my fight, my on going battle with the lords of the Apocalypse known only as Atos the killers of men and women who deserve more respect and help and support than they are ever given.
So for now i will leave you with this. next time i will write about the tribunal.
For now though the pants have spoken.