A worked example showing how the 12 PIP activities can be described for someone living with cancer and the effects of its treatment. Every answer is written in the first person, in the plain wording assessors look for, and each one weaves in the reliability factors that decide how an activity scores.
Cancer is not one condition, and the activity questions do not ask you to explain your diagnosis. It asks how your health affects everyday tasks, and with cancer that usually means the effects of treatment as much as the illness itself. Chemotherapy can bring a heavy, draining fatigue that rest does not fix, along with sickness, a sore mouth and numbness or tingling in the hands and feet. It can also affect memory and concentration, and it can lower your resistance to infection for part of each cycle. Radiotherapy often causes tiredness that builds through the course and can carry on for weeks or months after it ends, and it can make the skin in the treated area sore. Surgery can leave you unable to lift, reach or bend for weeks or longer, and hormone therapy can bring joint pain, hot flushes and tiredness. Add pain, low mood, worry and a diary full of scans, blood tests and treatment days, and ordinary tasks become very hard. Which of these you have depends on your type of cancer and your treatment, so write about your own effects rather than a list.
The trap with cancer is the good week. Treatment tends to come in cycles, so there may be days when you look and feel almost normal and days when you cannot get out of bed, and an assessor who meets you on a good day can easily underestimate the rest. The rules are clear that managing something once is not the test. An activity only counts as something you can do if you can do it safely, to an acceptable standard, repeatedly and in a reasonable time. If numb fingers mean you cannot feel a hot pan or a sharp knife, cooking is not safe. If you can shower but then have to lie down for an hour, you cannot do it repeatedly. If a task that used to take ten minutes now takes forty with rests, it is not being done in a reasonable time.
Because treatment runs in cycles, counting is what makes a cancer form clear. Say how many days in each cycle you cannot do something at all, how many you can only manage with help and how many are close to normal. Describe the effects that carry on after treatment finishes too, such as fatigue and nerve damage, which for some people last for months or longer. Name the help you rely on, from the person who steadies you in the bathroom to the one who checks your temperature and reminds you of your tablets, and mention help you need but go without. The example below does exactly that, activity by activity. The DWP always makes the final decision, but describing your day accurately gives your form the strongest chance of being understood.
What to cover for each one. Your paid form writes the full answers for you.
Leave the cooking to the question above and focus on getting food and drink down once it is in front of you. Describe a mouth so sore from chemotherapy or from radiotherapy to the head or neck that chewing and swallowing hurt, sickness that stops you finishing a plate or numb fingers that make you drop cutlery and need food cut up. If you are fed through a tube, explain who sets up and manages the feeds, and mention it if taste changes, low mood or exhaustion mean someone has to remind or encourage you to eat.
Chemotherapy or radiotherapy given in hospital does not belong here, but the routine at home around it does: tablets at set times including anti-sickness medicine and any chemotherapy tablets, injections given at home and checking your temperature and knowing when to ring the emergency number your team gave you. Say whether someone sets out your tablets in a dosette box, prompts you at dose times or keeps watch on your temperature when poor concentration or exhaustion makes you lose track. If a lymphoedema nurse or physiotherapist has given you exercises, massage or compression bandaging to do at home, say how long it takes each week and whether someone does it with you.
Many chemotherapy drugs and radiotherapy to the tummy or pelvis can cause diarrhoea and urgency, so describe how often you have to rush, any accidents and the pads or spare clothes you rely on. If surgery has left you with a stoma or a catheter, explain what emptying and changing it involves and whether numb fingers or tiredness mean someone helps. Bladder leakage after treatment for prostate, bladder or gynaecological cancer belongs here too; if none of this applies to you, say so honestly.
Describe how numb or tingling fingertips make buttons, zips, bra hooks and laces slow or impossible, and name any aids such as a button hook or elastic laces. Mention it if surgery to the breast, chest or armpit stops you lifting your arm to pull clothes over your head, or if a swollen arm or leg from lymphoedema makes sleeves, trousers and compression garments a struggle. Say how long dressing takes in a treatment week and whether someone helps with your lower half when bending makes you dizzy or sick.
Most people with cancer can speak and hear normally, so only claim this if something real applies, such as speech changes after treatment for head and neck cancer or hearing loss from some chemotherapy drugs, including cisplatin. The memory and concentration problems many people call chemo brain can also mean you lose your words or cannot follow what a doctor has just told you without someone there to take it in with you. If none of that is true for you, leave this one alone.
For many people with cancer this is less about eyesight and more about whether you can take in and hold on to what you read. If chemo brain or exhaustion means you read the same hospital letter three times and still cannot follow it, or someone goes through appointment letters, results and medication changes with you, explain that. If a tumour or its treatment has affected your sight, describe what you can and cannot see.
Describe any low mood, anxiety or distress that has come with the diagnosis and treatment, and whether changes to how you look, such as hair loss, weight loss, scars or a stoma, make you avoid people or need someone with you before you can face them. Staying away from crowds because your team warned you about infection is a medical precaution rather than what this question looks at, so focus on the emotional side. Mention any counselling or support from a psychologist or cancer support service.
Plenty of people keep full control of their own money all through treatment; if you do, just say so. If chemo brain means you lose track of bills, make mistakes with sums or cannot hold a budget in your head, describe what has gone wrong and who now checks your account or sits with you for bigger decisions. Being worried about money is not the same as being unable to manage it, so keep this about the difficulty rather than the cost of being ill.
Keep walking distance for moving around; this question is about finding your way and coping with the journey itself. What counts is chemo brain leaving you muddled on a route you know, or anxiety so severe that you cannot face leaving the house or going somewhere new without another person. If you can find your way and cope once you are out, be honest and describe the physical side under moving around instead.
Give the distance in metres you can walk before you have to stop, how long you need before you can go on and whether you could do it again. Explain what stops you, whether that is fatigue, breathlessness from a low blood count, pain or numb feet from chemotherapy that make you unsteady and afraid of falling, and name any stick, frame or person you lean on. Describe how this changes across a treatment cycle, and remember that a wheelchair does not count as an aid here, so say how far you can walk without one.
The tips above are general pointers. Your paid form gives you a full, ready-to-copy answer for all 12 activities, written from your exact conditions, medication, aids and bad days, not a general example. This is a worked example for cancer; yours is written for you. £99.99 one-off.
This is a worked example, not a script. It shows one honest way a person going through cancer treatment might describe their bad days, so you can see the level of detail and the plain wording that assessors are trained to look for. Please do not copy it word for word. Your own answers should reflect your cancer and your treatment, your worst and most common days across a whole cycle, the aids you actually use and the help you actually need or go without, because that is what the assessment is about and that is what makes an answer ring true.
Notice that not every activity has to be claimed. Being honest about what cancer and its treatment do not change makes the difficulties you do describe more believable, so there is no need to stretch every question. If you would rather start from your own words, tell us about your health and we will write your answers from your own conditions, in the same first-person style, ready for you to read, edit and copy onto your PIP2 claim form or AR1 review form.
Tell us about your cancer and its treatment in your own words and we will write one full activity for you, free, before you pay anything.
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