I never get to really talk about my disability and apparently a bunch of people didn’t realize I was disabled.
.
Which like, fair. I work 32 hours a week, and I’m in 17 credit hours for school. I go to school on tuesdays and thursdays from 8am - 7:15pm and I work every other day of the week. I push myself to the limit and I maintain my friends and social circles and I just continue going about my life. I talk about my disabilities sometimes, but never like they’re a big.
They’re a big deal.
A friend forced me to go into a walk in clinic and they gave me a referral to three specialists in about 10 minutes.
I’m suspected of having at least some sort of seizures, a dysautonomic something, and some hypermobility issues.
Based on my self treating for years, and my memory of my own experiences, we’ve got:
convulsive seizures, absence seizures, fainting, pots like symptoms, chronic dislocations, hearing loss, whatever the fuck happens when i lose my vision and hearing sometimes, passing out because of flickering lights, fainting every single day for 4 years (that an ex informed me of later on).
And that’s just. The physical stuff. That’s just the undiagnosed physical stuff. That’s my everyday life, my Not A Big Deal. But... it is a big deal, apparently.
I wake up and I take inventory of which of my joints are messed up. I have to remember to take my mood stabilizer because its an anticonvulsant and I’ll have a seizure if I miss a dose. I have to drink a *ton* of gatorade and electrolytes and stuff to help keep my body in check. I work in retail and am on my feet/ moving because if I’m sedentary for a couple of days, standing up will start triggering full body collapse and passing out. If I get too warm I’ll pass out, so I sleep with extra blankets on. If I get stressed out I need to make sure my not-at-work time is somewhere safe because I’m likely to pass out. I check my joints and my body, I take inventory. I feel my wrist wrong in my asl class and so I “pop” it twice, one in either direction, and feel everything in my wrist readjust. I take inventory if its better. If not I try a different way of fixing it.
I go a week with mild jaw pain and expressing it feels wrong to some friends, but I can’t put it back, so I move on. I go on two weeks. I eat my lunch at work and feel a shift and hear a pop and the pain I didn’t know I had is gone.