Appeal Lost

To pursue the analogy, there are no physical tests for factitious disorder or depression, either, but that does not prevent the symptoms of them enabling you to get ESA. There are no physical tests for quite a few conditions that impair you sufficiently physically or mentally to enable you to accrue sufficient points to get ESA.

Hi Rainbowlight,
I've heard something very similar from the consultant who diagnosed me with ME back in 1989, Dr Betty Dowsett. The way she put it was, 'the most common terminal event for people with ME is heart failure.'

Survivor wrote:

As I see it, the actual diagnosis isn't terribly relevant. What matters is whether you can accrue enough points according to the descriptors, not why you can or cannot do something.

Let us suppose that a doctor thinks that ME is all in the mind. You still have physical symptoms. Many mental conditions have physical symptoms, including fatigue, so he can say you have depression or factitious disorder or whatever, but it makes no difference. You have the same symptoms, the same ability or inability to do something.

Yes. Absolutely agree. That's how it should be. And the emphasis at tribunal should be on proving you fit the descriptors. However surely it's quite possible for a doctor on a tribunal to be so biased and/or illogical that he or she says "CFS isn't a proper illness therefore you're not ill and therefore you can't have ESA". And I got the impression that something of the sort happened here.

originaldave wrote:

mitochondrial function... but do know such cells have a lot to do with energy and so the more them cells are damaged the more some one would be weak ... the organ most at risk would I think be the heart too ...
(

Here you are Dave, read all about it, its a Neuromuscular Disorder can affect every muscle in the body......

www.mitochondrialncg.nhs.uk/