- One night
- she heard him sobbing
- downstairs.
- He worked long hours on the farm.
- He would leave at five AM.
- Some days she would not see him again
- until eleven. He wasn’t scared
- of work.
- Over the years he developed heart trouble,
- diabetes, terrible ulcers.
- His health deteriorated from there.
- He became depressed.
- She was borrowing money off everybody.
- Last winter
- they couldn’t put on the heating.
- They sat
- with blankets round them.
- He was called to his Jobcentre
- in late 2012.
- They took his blood pressure.
- They never checked his back or
- asked about his diabetes
- and the terrible ulcers he had on his legs.
- A computer told them
- he’d been on the sick
- for twenty-four years –
- that’s the only thing
- they really knew.
- It was decided
- that he was capable of limited employment.
- His benefit was cut.
- He appealed;
- a ruling would take almost a year.
- He didn’t have a year.
- It started in his neck,
- spread rapidly.
- A very rare form of cancer.
- He kept saying
- “I wish I could win this case
- before I die.”
- One night she heard him sobbing downstairs.
- He told her
- “I can’t go on.”
- The cancer took his sight,
- his hearing,
- finally
- his life.
- They
- took his dignity.
[Daily Mirror, 19/10/2013, Cancer killed my husband, but Atos took his dignity a long time before his death]