PIP!!!!

I can't believe that I haven't told you we've been successful with the PIP application.  Not only that but we've been awarded the enhanced rate and it will make such a difference to our lives.  We were ok before but what was coming in only covered bills and every day essentials whereas now we can go out for coffee or lunch and life is just that little bit brighter.  Ash seems to have picked up on this too and is all the better for it as you may have noticed from the posts of the past few days.  He still has his struggles obviously but, quite possibly because my mood is lighter, he seems a little more carefree than he has been for a very long while.

We're also now 'in the system' and today had a visit from a very nice social worker who came to assess whether or not Ash had mental capacity to make decisions about his care.  What was interesting about the visit was how obvious it was that he's much further down the line than I realised.  People ask me on a very regular basis how he is and how he's doing and I always say that it's hard to tell because when you live with it all on a daily basis and when life is structured to enable him to function as well as he possibly can it's all to easy to think that he's still capable.  This morning, before the social worker arrived, I was a little concerned that he would be able to cover up where he is and how little understanding he has but I needn't have worried.  Five minutes into the visit and it was perfectly obvious that he's not functioning on any meaningful level now.  It wasn't even as though he was stressed or concerned about the things he was being asked which, in the past, he would have been.  This morning it was just evident that he didn't understand any of it as he repeated the same answers or returned to the same topic of conversation whatever he was asked.  So that's today over with and, although it's been something of an eye opener, I've learnt from it and can now start to plan a little more.

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