Diff-Abled

“I choose not to place "DIS", in my ability.”
― Robert M. Hensel

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Do you know how strange it is to technically be disabled by the age of 18?  

I have no idea how many of you are familiar with my story.

I had chronic migraines for almost three years. I should probably say migraine. One word. I had one migraine for almost a year; it put me in and out of the hospital and I missed almost two full months of school. It was all over the place and never really diagnosed, to be honest half of the doctors thought I was lying. I had MRI's, X-rays, Ultra sounds and am now a pro at ER etiquette.

When you're a sick child/teenager with an illness that isn't terminal most of the time you just get left out. I'm not saying the doctors don't try, but you become graffiti in their life.

Your symptoms fill a room that is supposed to turn into a beautiful painting of your condition, but more often than not it becomes a mess of pictures, some similar to the others but ultimately disorganized and unidentifiable.

They pick which symptoms to listen to and follow it through with medications and IV's and scans. You learn every doctor, nurse and PA's name because they basically become family until they tell you that can't do anything more and you leave to find the next one. You eventually give up on the names because of all the switching. All it does is make things worse you don't know which medicine to keep taking, which ones are cause side effects. Is it a side effect or is it a new symptom??



You start to look at the room you've filled and it's driving you crazy. It used to be clean and open with so much room to move and add things, but it's falling apart and you just shuffle around in the rubble.

Each fallen beam a side effect of the treatment, an emotion, a memory, a fear. Something else falls and becomes a permanent addition to your space. A side effect that stayed with you. You can no longer hear the beams fall or the doctors tell you what's wrong because they did this.

I stand up in pain because pain is all I know and yell with  my hands because that's all I can do now. They took it away from me. They gave me nothing but their time and only just.

But now, now I sit in the room and admire it for it has become my home.

I am a work of art with no title.

All I am is symptoms of the fall, but I know it will be okay because I am comfortable. I have learned to love the rubble. While most 18 year olds live more lavishly than I, they do not posses the knowledge and passion of and for the world that resides deep inside me. It burns like hell in my mind.

Too many live in the rubble, comfortable or not they deserve more. They deserve a diagnosis, a family, a doctor that believes them.

Even though I am happy in my rubble I am angry for those who are not; angry that no one has tried to find them a new home or at least given their rubble art a name.

So, that is what it's like to be DIFF-abled at 18.

I am a physically diff-abled, hard of hearing individual with a burning desire to change the world.

Truly,

Abby

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