Hi Mike, glad I was able to put your mind at ease a little bit. The main thing to remember is you have support here ( and it’s available from the sites that have been mentioned already ) so you are not alone. 🙂
As Joss suggested, ( glad to have saved you some typing Joss 🙂 ) you can type out your answers, just number the pages and then in the box on the form, write see page 6 of enclosed notes, or whatever number page the relevant information is on. Remember to put your name and national insurance number on the top of each page. You can start doing that now, then you will have a head start when your form arrives.
Let’s look at the preparing food question I posted yesterday.
1 a. Can prepare and cook a simple meal unaided. 0 points
1 b. Needs to use an aid or appliance to be able to either prepare or cook a simple meal. 2 points
1 c. Cannot cook a simple meal using a conventional cooker but is able to do so using a microwave. 2 points
1 d. Needs prompting to be able to either prepare or cook a simple meal. 2 points
1 e. Needs supervision or assistance to either prepare or cook a simple meal. 4 points.
1 f. Cannot prepare and cook food. 8 points.
You said in one of your posts that you can’t move your fingers to write. So let’s think about how that will affect your ability to prepare food.
They assume you have all the ingredients out ready to hand and this is about cooking on the top of your oven only, not roast dinners, more your common or garden pan of stew.
So if you can’t move your fingers to write, you are going to have difficulty holding a knife properly to peel and chop your vegetables.
So no, you are not able to prepare food unaided. Would a simple aid help you to that, possibly, you might need something that will hold your veg still while you peel? Does that solve the problem of you being able to grip a knife properly? Have you cut yourself trying to peel veg, if so tell them about it.
Think about the reliability criteria.
Can you manage to eventually peel your veg but it takes you a very long time? Maybe you have to stop several times to rest your hands, in which case you can’t prepare your meal in a timely manner.
Do you struggle to peel a potato properly so that half of it still has it’s skin on it? If so, that could possibly be construed as not being able to prepare your veg to an acceptable standard.
Is it difficult to such a degree that preparing veg is an impossibility and so someone else has to do it for you, or do you have to use frozen ready prepared veg?
( These are just rhetorical questions by the way, i’m not trying to pry into your health problems, just trying to advise how to think about the questions and your answers to them. )
So, ok you’ve somehow managed to get your potatoes in the pan. Due to not being able to grip properly you are not able to lift a pan to drain it, so would have to use a draining spoon at the very least. However, even gripping the spoon is very difficult so that the potatoes fall off the spoon and onto the floor. This could again be construed as not being able to reliably transfer food to plate.
If you also have problems with fatigue for instance, you can also say that due to the fatigue, the exhaustion from cooking a meal of this sort leaves you unable to do it again more than twice a week. Don’t forget, your difficulties have to be present on the majority of days, so if you can’t cook more than twice a week, then you are unable to prepare a meal as often as needed.
A word of caution.
At your face to face, the health professional :/ might ask you something along the lines of, if you can’t grip a knife to peel veg, how can you use a gear lever in a car in order to drive? So you would need to explain how you manage to drive. Just be aware that they can and do throw curveballs, so remember to cross reference how a problem in one area, leads to the same thing being a problem in another area and how you overcome that problem or not, in each scenario.
For instance, if you can’t grip a knife to chop and peel veg, how do you manage to use cutlery to eat. Does someone have to cut your food for you? Or how do you hold a bar of soap to get washed with.
I would recommend, if you haven’t already done so, doing the self test I linked to yesterday. That will give you a good idea of where you are likely to score, then you can think about how to start answering the questions.
Hi Macca and Tomas, will reply to your posts in a little while 🙂
Apparently it helps if you log in to post something :/ silly zelda! 🙁 lol