Any one else physicaly disabled?

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Any one else phyaicly disabled? If so please share. I have had multipel back injuries causeing collapsed disks and never damage. I have torn almost everything in both knees. My legs are twisted so they point out sideways. I have lost about 50% of the muscle controle and 25% of the feeling from the middle of my back down to my toes. Both of my hips dislocate 2-3 a week. If anyone was wondering, I can only walk about 20 feet with my braces and cane befor I start to fall over.

Do you have a diagnosis/underlying condition for all that stuff? Or just the back injuries coupled with bad luck or something?

Depending on your definition, yes. I consider myself so. This past summer I started experiencing nerve damage symptoms and so they sent me for an MRI to get treated for a herniated disc. Guess what? It wasn't a disc issue. So I had a tethered spinal cord (spina bifida occulta) which I had untethered about 6 months ago. A combination of the years of tethering and the adjustment to untethering etc. I have nerve damage and other problems.

I have been in physical therapy for months now for my back and legs. I used to play soccer and have flexible legs and a few months after surgery I couldn't even tie my shoes because it required too much flexibility. So I have chronic back pain and symptoms of peripheral neuropathy in my legs. One of my legs experiences tingling/numbness/shooting pain in it and the other just has damaged nerves (I discovered this because I am a compulsive skin picker and the back of my thigh got picked to a dangerous extent because I can't feel pain there). Due to sacral nerve damage, my bladder muscles had to be retrained (I'm in physical therapy twice a week) and I have referred pain. Essentially, between my lower back and knees nothing works the way it used to.

I am no longer outwardly disabled. I can walk. Sometimes, I can even walk on stairs. I however have permanent nerve damage and still have a 7cm long fatty mass (benign tumor) in my spinal canal which could potential retether my cord and further my symptoms (luckily, the chance of retethering is small).

Were you just curious about physical disabilities or did you want to speak to someone else about it? Either way, you are welcome to PM me about it. I'm involved in disability rights stuff and my friends from that program with physical disabilities helped me tremendously through my diagnosis and surgery.

I'm not too disabled, but I have JRA (juvenile rheumatoid arthritis) in my left elbow and my right knee. I've had them since I was in preschool. I'm able to be physically active to a point though. I have to wear a brace on my knee if I'm running a lot in sports, but I can't really do much for my elbow.

Hiya. I have cerebral palsy and what my doctors think is mitochondrial disease. Both linked to autism, hmm.

I haven't heard of CP being linked to Autism before...How does that work? Also, how extensive is your CP? I have a bunch of friends with CP and I know there is a HUGE range of actual presentations of it.

What is mitochondrial disease? (One of my special interests is medical stuff and I find diseases/disorders/etc fascinating)

Well, my doc said CP just made it more likely to have everything, including autism. I have a pretty mild case-no sports for me, let's put it that way. I'm a little lopsided. Mitochondrial disease is actually a wide variety of mutations of the mitochondria, which are the "power plants" of the cells. It can cause a vast number of things, and has been correlated to autism. If you're mysteriously sick and have more than three organ systems involved, it might be mitochondrial disease.

http://www.umdf.org/site/c.otJVJ7MMIqE/ ... 0/Home.htm

Due to working out, my back is commonly sore and I have to deal with Sciatic nerve pain.

I was born with a very rare genetic low vision disorder that wasn't identified till my senior year of high-school. I'm very nearsighted, have some color blindness & am more sensitive to lighting conditions. My vision acuity is 20/100. I cant drive because of it which sux because I live in a rural area without public transportation Condition is called Incomplete Achromatopsia. Here's link incase anyone actually cares http://www.lowvision.org/achromatopsia_ ... indnes.htm

I also have Essential Tremors. My hands & arms shake when I'm nervous, stressed, frustrated or doing something with fine motor-skills. I occasionally affects my voice as well. It was aLOT worse when I was on psych meds years ago. Here's link http://www.essentialtremor.org/SiteReso ... cName=Home

Can you read things in large print or do you prefer audio? I was super excited to see that google chrome has an audio version for people with low vision to use chrome easily. Thanks for providing a link though! For those of us who find rare genetic disorders and other bizarre medical things to be fascinating (in an aspie way), diagnoses and links are much appreciated.

The essential tremors thing I haven't heard of before as a diagnosis. One of my friends in high school I think has that because she had the hand shaking thing sometimes and people used to be annoying and be like "whoa! do you have parkinson's or something?!". Whenever she put on eyeliner her hand would be all over the place and I'd be scared she was going to poke her eye out!

^^^ After high-school I spent 6 months in a training facility for people who are blind, going blind or have very bad vision to learn life-skills. I tried a program out when I was there that read stuff but I didn't like it. I was used to doing things on comp visually thou. I sit close to my monitor & I sometimes highlight text. Colors of some text can be hard to see & highlighting became kind of a habit. Very few people have heard of it. most of what I've seen online about it was medical stuff for docs & a lot of it was about the genetics.

It may be that. I had problems in high-school like that except I never used eyeliner. Essential Tremors tend to develop when people are older but I'm one of the rarer lucky 1s. They also tend to have a family history of it but I don't.