Don’t Get a Hernia
One minute, everything’s fine; you have a job, a girlfriend, a social life, and plans. Everyone knows you’re a good bloke, you work hard and you enjoy the craic. You had a difficult few years a while back; a relationship broke down, you were even temporarily homeless for a short spell, but then you got back on your feet, with a bit of help from here and there, and you even managed to sort that bloody mortgage out — for the first time in years, no arrears! The threat of losing your home - gone. Money coming in and just a little less money going out. Good times.
Then came the hernia.
Meet JD, a client of mine for the past 5 or 6 years. We met around the 3rd sentence in the 1st paragraph, when debts had got to the stage of being no-longer-ignorable.
JD gave me permission to tell his story as I think it’s a story worth telling. It’s about the state of things — the health service, the department for work and pensions, the cost of existing and the terrible impact that all of this has on an individual who just can’t catch a break. It could be you, it could be me. It’s a horror story, I’m afraid.
JD is 40-something. The first time he came to see me he was emerging out the other side of something dark. He’d accepted the losses (relationship/family breakdown) and was trying hard to rebuild his life. Working again, as a groundworker, sometimes ‘cards in’, sometimes not. The work could be intermittent, but usually brought in decent pay and JD always seemed upbeat, with good humour and a fighting spirit. He’d taken some knocks but was quite ‘ard (as we say up north). He’d had a past, learned from mistakes, and was a determined survivor.
He did have a weakness though; a very low tolerance for dealing with financial characters, particularly those involved in chasing debts, which is where I could help.
For years, he’d had mortgage arrears. JD is in fact a mortgage ‘prisoner’, having started off with a Northern Rock mortgage which was sold out to a high interest charging company called Whistletree (a TSB brand - not currently enjoying rave reviews on Google, alas).
We’ve spoken to Whistletree a lot over the years, and to be fair to them, they’ve always been very helpful and patient with us. That said, the bureaucracy involved is enough to drive anyone towards a Michael Douglas Falling Down moment. Policy changes lead to ‘new ways of doing things’, which throw curveballs at the least opportune times. Negotiations involved endless hours going through income and expenditures that had barely changed since the last one, but needed to be done again in forensic detail so that someone in a back office could rubber stamp whichever arrangement we were making for the next 3 months. Whatever the policy was last time would then change, so the thing they said they’d do last time, was no longer on the table and we’d have to start again.
In October 2021, JD was doing well — work was steady and looking long-term. Having toyed with the idea of selling his house earlier in the year, he now felt things were stable enough to stay put. He’d been paying his mortgage and something off the arrears for months and everything was going in the right direction. If only we could do something about that mortgage interest rate.
This was when Whistletree suggested a ‘product switch’; not a full on remortgage, but a way to capitalise the remaining arrears at a much lower interest rate and start again, with a clean slate.
We sat through very long telephone calls with the mortgage adviser, went through income and expenditures (again), went through all of the options, and eventually JD chose a pretty good deal — a 5 year fix at 1.09% (imagine how impossibly good that rate looks now in January 2023).
For the first time in a long, long time, JD would have no mortgage arrears and would be paying less each month. It was affordable. He could even start to put something away for a rainy day. He was a prisoner no more.
Within a couple of weeks of the new mortgage deal being put in place, JD started experiencing pain in his groin. It got a bit worse. A groundworker does proper graft — lifting, shifting — the kind of work that makes a gnawing pain in the guts hard to ignore, especially when the lifting and shifting makes it worse.
December 2021. JD went to see his GP and tests showed he had developed a hernia. Not life-threatening but not something that would just go away or sort itself out. In fact, more than likely it would get worse, given the physical nature of his job. He entered a post-pandemic NHS waiting list for surgery, hoping it would all be done within 2–3 months. It was a bit annoying — he’d need to have time off work to recover and there’s no such thing as ‘sick pay’ when you are primarily self-employed.
And for that reason, JD continued to put up with the pain and kept working. After all, Christmas was on the way, and there was that new mortgage to keep on top of.
Unfortunately, by late December, the pain was much worse. And different somehow. More tests ensued and these confirmed that there was a second hernia. JD was in agony at this point, on serious painkillers. Carrying on regardless was no longer an option.
For the next couple of months, JD became a prisoner again — in his own home. Unable to walk far, in constant pain, and having used up the small amount of savings he had managed to build up. No sign of an operation on the horizon and a phone constantly and annoyingly buzzing with offers of work. It grated at JD to have to turn these opportunities down, but what could he do? Hernias are not usually life-threatening, but could become so, especially when he now had two of the damn things. Not worth the risk.
In February 22, there was nothing else for it but to claim Universal Credit (UC). The mortgage wasn’t being paid but there were energy prepayment meters that needed topping up and food that needed buying. Trouble is, the first thing you do when you claim UC is wait — around 5 weeks for your first payment — so you borrow money from the DWP to get by. It won’t be much, and you will pay it back from your benefit every month (when it eventually goes into payment), but it might pay your mobile phone bill (which you will need to log in to your UC journal), or your water bill or whatever. And then you ask for help from anywhere that will give it. Which meant Foodbank vouchers for JD, and top-up vouchers for the prepayment meters from the local Council Support Fund. And a subscription to the Penny Pantry — more on this shortly.
How quickly you can put aside your pride when you’re starving and freezing. How quickly you can be right back to square one, despite any and all good fortune that comes your way. It takes so little to shatter the perceived stability that comes from being fit and able to earn a wage and pay the bills that it’s actually terrifying how quickly it can disappear. There but for the grace…go any of us.
Let’s go back to Universal Credit. When JD finally got his payment it was £311.30. Per month. Imagine going from £400 per week to £311 per month.
Imagine that your mortgage payment is £404. Well, that’s out the window straight away. What about gas and electricity? Already expensive, but it went up in April 2022 and JD was already paying the premium for being a prepayment meter customer.
You’re stuck in your house, alone, 24/7 and you’re in pain most of the time. You’re probably going to have the lights on, heating, a fridge running, hot water, a television on, because what else are you going to do? Let’s be conservative and say £20 per week on gas and electricity each. That’s more than half of your income gone already. That would leave you £137.96 per month to cover:
- TV Licence — £16.25 (paid weekly £3.75)
- Water — £15
- Travel costs for hospital and jobcentre appointments: £35
- Mobile phone— £20
- TV/Internet — £45 (in contract)
Leaving £6.71 for food. For a month.
I hear people talk about the easy life folks have ‘on benefits’. ‘They always have the latest mobile phones and designer clothes’ is another common trope dribbled out by anyone who hasn’t been there and simply can’t believe the reality is that bad. It is that bad. Really.
The welfare state is not a safety net that catches us when we fall on difficult times; it’s a thin, measly sheet of the cheapest single-ply tissue which you plunge straight through before hitting the ground with a nasty thump.
If you are suffering from a medical condition, that prevents you from working, Universal Credit has an element that you can claim — called Limited Capability for Work Related Activity. This is worth an additional £354 per month. There is another element: Limited Capability for Work (spot the subtle difference); this is worth £0 extra per month.
You have to be assessed for this, which includes filling in a form and undergoing an assessment either in person or over the phone. JD duly filled in the form. Double hernia, constant pain, difficulty bending, lifting, walking any distance and sleeping; all backed up by ‘fit-notes’ from the GP (‘cos we can’t describe ourselves as sick any more — being sick is sooo self-defeating, let’s talk about when you will be fit for work instead! Crystal ball required).
Then you wait. Months.
At the same time, I advised JD to also apply for Personal Independence Payments (PIP). This is a benefit payment which is not means-tested, to provide financial support to someone with a disability. There are 2 components — daily living and moving around. Ordinarily, someone with a hernia would not qualify for PIP because — ordinarily— you don’t suffer with it for long enough. But this was 2022, where every interaction with a government department takes eons. Who knows how long this goes on for? Nothing to lose by applying, other than a tiny bit more sanity as there will be another form and another assessment.
Around April/May 2022, JD was getting fed up. No operation in sight and pain getting worse. No word on the Work Capability Assessment — even less than no word on the PIP assessment, as JD had already been forewarned this would take several eons, an age and maybe even an epoch (in the geologic sense) to come through. I therefore wrote to the local MP (Labour). It’s the DWP, I thought, it’s the NHS — let’s put this constituent on the MP’s radar.
The MP wrote to the NHS and the DWP. And still JD waited. All the while, the mortgage was falling deeper and deeper into arrears, the cost of living was increasing at a truly alarming rate and JD was losing hope.
Pantry Woes
In one of our early applications for financial help from the local authority support fund, a subscription for 3 weeks was paid to the local ‘penny pantry’. The way it works is something like this: you pay £3.50 per week and you get to choose 10 items from the local community pantry, which could include fresh fruit, bread, vegetables and meat. The average value of the goods you get for £3.50 is thought to be around £25, so it’s really good value.
However! With such good value, comes the ‘penny pantry early bird playbook’. Think of those characters who turn up to the car boot sale at 6am and start rummaging through the boxes in your boot before you’ve even constructed your decorating table. These early birds are determined as hell and, in times of hardship, who can blame them for wanting to secure the pick of the weekly 10 items? It’s survival of the fittest out there — you’ve got to be in it (early) to win it.
And so, JD quickly learned that turning up to the Pantry a couple of minutes before opening time is rookie behaviour. The queue has been forming for hours and it’s very, very long. By the time, you get to the front, the pickings are slim, but my God, you’re grateful for them anyway. It’s food, it’s cheap, it’s probably not going to be exciting or anything you will really look forward to but hey, it will keep you alive.
JD was telling me one day about the tin of Stagg Chilli he got. ‘Fucking awful’ he said (sorry Stagg). ‘Depressing’. And he was at great pains not to sound ungrateful — the foodbanks, the vouchers, the pantry etc — he was genuinely so grateful for all of it, but…come on. Stuck inside, in miserable pain, day in, day out, no end in sight, barely a pot to piss in, and the highlight of your day is a tin of habanero dynamite.
We got letters back from the MP eventually — around May/June. Mostly apologies from the DWP and the NHS that everything was taking so long. Everything was out of everyone’s hands. DWP — backlogs. NHS — backlogs. Covid. Tories. Ukraine. Putin. Etc. Meanwhile, as JD hadn’t yet been found to be officially incapacitated for work, he was still having to turn up at the Job Centre every couple of weeks to demonstrate the many ways he had been looking for work.
Except he hadn’t, and he told them so, and they knew why, because it was obvious, but in the limbo land of waiting-for-an-assessment, they all had to go through the motions. It’s a nonsense.
Meanwhile, Whistletree were on the phone and in the letterbox every 5 minutes requesting updates. JD had told them exactly what was happening, and maybe they couldn’t believe how rubbish the systems were either. Still waiting for benefits? Still waiting for an operation? Huh? Can’t you get any other help with the mortgage? Well, yes, there’s this thing called Support for Mortgage Interest which would help — only trouble is you have to be on Universal Credit for 9 months before you can apply for it*. You could almost hear the forehead being slapped.
*Note — this is going to reduce to 3 months from Spring 2023 — read more here
The operation
Finally, JD got his operation in July 2022. Writing this now in January 2023, I’m thinking this was remarkably quick. Only 7 months? Luxury! (It didn’t seem like that at the time).
But for JD there was finally an end in sight. He would need a month or two of recovery time and would need to take it easy at first, but at last the nightmare could be over.
The Work Capability Assessment had also been completed and the PIP assessment too, but who cared about those? JD was already putting out the feelers with his old workmates and eyeing up the offers that had started to trickle in again. Things were looking up and JD could not wait to be off benefits and back in work.
August 2022. JD was found to have ‘limited capability for work’ (zero additional payment). The theory was that although he couldn’t currently do the work he had done all his life, he could retrain and do something else less physical…while his hernias groaned away in the background. But hernias were now a thing of the past. Right?
Right?
JD is on the phone one day in August. ‘Something’s not right’ he says. ‘It doesn’t feel right. One of the hernias seems OK, but the other…it’s just not right.’
And he was spot on. More tests confirmed that one of the hernia repairs had not been successful, and JD would need further surgery.
Quick as a flash, we got a mandatory reconsideration request into the DWP to challenge their decision that JD did not have limited blah blah for work related blah. If this was going to drag on — and it was — then the £311 — which was about to be come £292 per month due to further deductions to repay another loan, was going to cause serious harm, and not just to the bills, but to JD’s mental health.
The PIP application was also denied. And a mandatory recon went in for that too. By September 2022, JD was really struggling. The depression was swallowing him up. There’s only so much time you can be stuck at home, not socialising, not seeing people, not able to afford anything before the thinking starts to take over. Thinking about the past, mistakes made that can’t be changed — thinking about the future — and what future? Friends weren’t around like they were in the beginning because you’re just no fun these days. Relationships suffer.
JD would tell me about sitting in an armchair, trying to be comfortable, trying to stay warm, watching every bit of crap the TV threw at you, and feeling utterly hopeless. Even having a shower was painful, so what was the point? The weekly trip to the pantry, realising once again that all the best things would be long gone before you got there. The mortgage company on the phone — trying their best not to be annoyed that things weren’t working out as JD thought they would, knowing that absolutely none of this was his fault.
Both of the PIP and UC reconsiderations resulted in unchanged decisions. Next step; appeals. There were tears just once around this time. JD was in touch with the mental health services now and they’d written something about him that was going to help with his appeals, but laid out in stark terms just how badly the last 9 months or so had affected him, with ‘symptoms of depression that are significantly impacting their ability to function day to day’ and ‘smashes and burns things in the garden as coping mechanism.’
For information, a PHQ 9 (depression) score of 18 = moderately severe. A GAD (Anxiety) 7 score of 12 = Moderate Anxiety. (The WSAS (Work and Social Adjustment Scale) score was normal).
All this, because of a sodding hernia.
In November 2022, JD (back on the NHS waiting list for surgery and also waiting for appeal dates to come through) finally hit the magic 9 months of continuous UC claiming to be able to apply for Support for Mortgage Interest (SMI), which is a loan from the government to pay some/all of the interest on your mortgage while you are claiming UC.
JD and I meticulously completed the forms — one allowing the loan to be secured by way of a charge on the property, and one providing the mortgage details. The first goes to the DWP and the latter, to the mortgage provider.
Within a couple of weeks, the DWP contacted JD to say something was wrong with the forms and they would need to send them out again. For the life of me I still can’t think what went wrong — this wasn’t my first SMI loan application form-filling rodeo and I hadn’t got them wrong before. But I must have missed something, right?
The mortgage company confirmed they had received their form and completed it and sent it on to the DWP but the DWP said they hadn’t received it…
And this brings us almost into real-time. Just last week, JD and I completed the SMI loan forms again. Reading the instructions several times, checking and double-checking, posting recorded delivery. This could buy time with the mortgage company and slow down the build up of arrears. Every penny will count.
JD is waiting for dates. Dates for hearings for his Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payments appeals, and a date for surgery. All the while hoping that Whistletree don’t give up on him and start a possession claim (which they could easily do now that arrears are well over £4000).
Hernias should not become disabilities, they should not prevent you from working for 12 months+. They should not make you depressed and anxious, nor close down your social life, separate you from your loved ones, isolate you or turn your home into a prison.
But this is England 2023. It’s fragile, scary — don’t think about it too much. Don’t think about how long an ambulance might take to arrive if the worst happens. Don’t think about the litany of disasters in Westminster and the apparent abandon of those that wield all the power and never have to eat Stagg Chilli. And don’t, whatever you do, get a hernia.
Keep your fingers crossed for JD — updates will come as and when we have them.
