Gees! What a ride!

I walked into the office with the assessor, and my support person arrived shortly afterwards.

The assessment began with questions. Beside the assessor sat a large stack of papers—my case file. He gestured towards it and said “this is your file” with a tone that suggested it was an inconvenience, an annoyance he had to deal with rather than the story of someone’s life.

Question after question was met with scepticism.

“You must feel better now you’re not working?”

Really? How?

I was financially unstable. I was still super unwell. No one could explain what was happening to me, and no one seemed able to help. Yet I was repeatedly made to feel as though the symptoms I was experiencing were, in the assessor’s words, “disproportionate to my injury.” Of which I replied “imagine being me!”

If his statement was true, then what was wrong with me?

I said what about the mental injury assessment? In which he didn’t know had been done – he pulled it out of my file and as he was reading, he said I’m not sure I’m supposed to read this (and continued reading?)

At one point, in full earshot of the assessor, I turned to my support person and said, “I feel the questioning is aggressive, and I don’t feel safe.”

It made no difference. His approach didn’t soften. It felt as though he had formed his opinion long before I wobbled into his office.

After less than an hour, he gave me a permanent impairment score of 0.

Yet in the same breath, he said he would be happy to change it if the neurologist reached a different conclusion.

That left me wondering: if another specialist’s opinion was what really mattered, why was I put through an assessment where I spent 30 minutes being told how I should feel, why I shouldn’t be feeling the way I did, and having my lived experience questioned?

The hardest part was realising he hadn’t even read my history.

He hadn’t taken the time to understand the years of medical evidence, the appointments, the setbacks, or the reality of living with a brain injury.

His mind appeared to have been made up before I ever walked through the door.

After this assessment, my support person said, “it was like you were on trial for murder!”

This assessment only added to my existing fear of people, of the outside world, the fear that I would never know what is happening to me.

I left absolutely crushed, bereft and unsure of what to do next….

Fear that acc being able to decline my “claim” is wayyyy more important to them, than my health and I am stuck between acc and public health system…

I stupidly believed that paying for acc would cover me in the event I would be injured…. The reality is far from this….

If you are unwell, you would get help (nope!)

Will someone ever be able to help me?