Blue badge application - good days and bad days? 6 July 2020 at 12:50PM in Disability money matters 25 replies 1.5K views

sbylouk

Hi everyone, I’ve tried googling this but it’s harder than I thought. My main condition is Fibromyalgia and I would say I’m relatively high functioning. However I get very bad days. I go from being able to walk between 1 and 3 miles depending on the day to not being able to make it around the house without 10/10 severe pain. I want to be honest on my blue badge application form and say this but it doesn’t seem set up for that? I’ve often heard that you should put it as your worst day. But we’re talking one or two incidents of 2 or 3 days per month here. It would feel fraudulent. I would rather be completely transparent and let them judge me exactly as I am. I would then use the badge for my bad days.

all I can think is to tick the boxes like it’s a bad day and then in the descriptive boxes state that I am filling out for my worst days and state how often they tend to occur. Would this be correct?

Thanks

cantcope

if you could barely walk and was in severe pain would you be going out to need the blue badge anyway?
My really worst days where i can barely walk (i cant walk far on my best days, certainly not a mile) i don't go out. if you have 2 or 3 days a month where you cant walk 3 miles i dont think you really need a blue badge. Fill the form on honestly about an average day (which sounds like no need) and see what they say.

sbylouk

cantcope said:

if you could barely walk and was in severe pain would you be going out to need the blue badge anyway?
My really worst days where i can barely walk (i cant walk far on my best days, certainly not a mile) i don't go out. if you have 2 or 3 days a month where you cant walk 3 miles i dont think you really need a blue badge. Fill the form on honestly about an average day (which sounds like no need) and see what they say.

Yeah, I do still have to go out. Life doesn’t stop when I’m in pain; it would help to park closer to work for instance or do food shopping because I have none in the house. You are correct in that I wouldn’t need it on an average day. Probably about 6 days in the month at a guess but those days are starting to get harder now which is why I’ve decided to try.

Alter_ego

Having a blue badge does not mean you have to use it. (On good days)

sbylouk

Oh and to clarify it’s 6 ish days a month where I cannot walk any distance without severe pain and it’s so bad I just don’t want to exist anymore. It’s not just that I can’t walk 3 miles. It’s 0 miles. But I currently have to push myself through the pain and it makes me so miserable when it’s a few days in a row.

Spoonie_Turtle

That's a tough one, because as I understand it's assessed similarly to the mobility part of PIP, i.e. based on how you are on more than 50% of the days and based on reliably, repeatedly, safely, and in a reasonable time.

Just from what you describe it doesn't sound like you stand too much chance but it still might be worth applying anyway - what have you got to lose? If you do go for it, I think ticking the boxes as your worst days and then making it VERY clear how often these worst days are is probably the way to go.

On the scale of worst days to 'can walk a mile' days, where do your average days tend to fall? And are your worst days perhaps happening because you're in a boom and bust cycle? If that were so, then walking further on your better days maybe isn't without repercussions - and if things are getting worse, maybe that's something to look at.

[I have ME/CFS which was initially diagnosed as fibro and with zero professional support, and the constant pushing myself was what made me so much worse. I pushed until I ended up extremely ill and my body forced me to stop before things began to stabilise, which is why what you say is ringing alarm bells for me. If you know you are not in a boom and bust cycle and it's just the natural fluctuation of the illness then my apologies.]

sbylouk

Thank you @Spoonie_Turtle for your very detailed post! You’re right that over doing it some days leads to my bad days. Also stress and anxiety will lead to a very bad day too; much more so than walking 3 miles.

My bad days are obviously much less than 50%, I didn’t know they assessed it like PIP - in which case no point as there’s no way I’m bad enough for PIP

sbylouk

Oh and it’s taken 14 years of hard work and patience to get to the three miles if anyone else with fibro is reading and it doesn’t sound realistic. I promise I was diagnosed by a rhematologist in a hospital!

JJ_Egan

Yes should be based upon your bad days . As you never know when a bad day will strike you .

poppy12345

JJ_Egan said:

Yes should be based upon your bad days . As you never know when a bad day will strike you .

That's the worst advice i've ever seen. You should never ever base a form on your worst days because that could be classed as fraud. Always tell the truth and this way it will never come back to bite you.

OP, you stated on a good day that you can walk 1-3 miles, wow. I have fibro and was diagnosed by a Rheumatologist about 9-10 years ago. I can't walk 20 metres, without extreme pain, never mind 1 mile and you can walk 3 miles on a good day. Please share your secret. Based on this i don't think you'll have any success with the blue badge, sorry just my thoughts. I do however, wish you goodluck if you do decide to apply.

sbylouk

poppy12345 said:

OP, you stated on a good day that you can walk 1-3 miles, wow. I have fibro and was diagnosed by a Rheumatologist about 9-10 years ago. I can't walk 20 metres, without extreme pain, never mind 1 mile and you can walk 3 miles on a good day. Please share your secret. Based on this i don't think you'll have any success with the blue badge, sorry just my thoughts. I do however, wish you goodluck if you do decide to apply.

Like I said in my first post, I think I’m too high functioning most of the time and will have to just continue to push through the bad days. I think you’re right there.

As for my secret? Not sure. I was only able to push past a mile about 2 years ago. So initially I was on crutches for the first two years and then for a long time, same as you, I couldn’t walk more than about 20 meters without a rest. I actually can’t stand still for any length of time without leaning on something and I can’t walk slowly (like round an art gallery or museum) but I think that’s more down to my hyper mobility than the fibro. I can only walk about 3 miles 2 days in a row, then nothing for a couple of days, then maybe 1 or two miles after that until I can do 3 again. It’s sort of in cycles. But when I get a bit stressed and anxious EVERYTHING hurts for at least 2 days. My skin burns, my brain doesn’t work, I feel like I’m walking through treacle and oh the headaches. They are not good.

I was super super fit before I had ‘the accident’, I was actually in RAF officer training when it happened. So I think that gave me an edge. I also push myself through a lot of pain; but I think most people with fibro do that. Those 3 miles are not a walk in the park, but pushing through them doesn’t feel like a mental struggle in the same way bad days do.

what I think really helped was a course of acupuncture I did once. My sleep got massively better after that. I still don’t really get the deep sleep, but I’m not as tired all the time. I’ve since come to the conclusion that the acupuncture didn’t really work for me but it was such a good placebo. Like I had the internal ability all along to sleep better but needed something to trigger it.

hope that all makes sense!

edit: oh and I completely forgot, I see a chiropractor every 3 weeks. That probably has a massive impact.