In regard to that previous reblog– and other notes in that thread discussing just how much hearing aids actually can or can’t do, and vision problems that can’t be corrected to 20/20, and other not-correctable disabilities–

…my thoughts are running off now into the fuzzy areas, which are places I… really tend to get uncomfortable.

Especially now, because I’m currently in a fuzzy place myself – a state of health where I do not know if my impairments can be fully corrected – and whether or not they can? may depend a lot on things like, will I find a doctor good enough to know what’s going on? and, how bad will this new job be for my body?

and it stresses me out a lot to think about how I can’t know the answers to any of that right now– and that’s about all I can handle, even without the added stress of trying to determine whether this makes me “legitimately” physically disabled.

Eyesight is only one small part of it. My main worry right now is that I have hardly any sensation or muscle control in my right calf and foot. With good shoes I can walk, without cane or crutches– pretty far before my limp becomes noticeable– but it does.

My legs are visibly different sizes, with my left calf taking on all the muscle, while my right is atrophying. And my foot “drops,” noticeably, the outer side dragging to the point that I had to learn how to avoid tripping on my own foot. The PT says I’ll likely need an orthotic brace called AFO to support it.

He doesn’t know the cause. I won’t know the cause until at the very least a couple weeks from now, when I get to see the spine specialist who’ll look for causes further up in my muscular and nervous system.

I have a new job. It’s gonna be mostly at a desk, but since this problem started while I was working a desk job, I wonder if sedentary life makes it worse. I haven’t ever been able to drive (that was a different neurological issue in my teens) so I have to walk to work. If I stop being able to walk that far, I won’t be able to keep doing this job. But for now I can. For now, for that distance, my walking almost passes as normal.

I don’t know how close to normal that orthotic brace will get me. Or whether the exercises the PT is having me do, or anything the spine specialist can do, will restore any of that sensation or muscle. I don’t know if there’s any kind of correction that’s gonna get my leg back into a range comparable to eyes that see 20/20.

And the eyesight part, at the moment, feels pretty much the same to me.

I just got new glasses. They help a lot, but they don’t fix my problem focusing on close-up things– I keep having to take them off and back on when reading, but my eye doctor said I didn’t need bifocals, and none of the available prescriptions of reading glasses help either, and it seems to be getting steadily worse.

And I don’t know if this is all just something I can get back up to 20/20 by finding a better eye doctor, or by getting better about my reading and screen use habits, or if it’s something more serious that is never gonna get better.

And I have no idea if all the data entry im going to do at my new job is going to exacerbate it, or maybe it’s just going to get worse for whatever other reason, until I can’t get any glasses that’ll make it good enough to do a job like that?

I don’t know.

I don’t want to call my eye problem, or my leg problem, a disability on the level of needing hearing aids or crutches. Because I want to think it can be fixed to the point I can forget about it.

But is “not wanting” a good enough reason to say this doesn’t count as disability? Is it just denial?

Which is why I am kind of regretting even reading that previous post I reblogged. Because where even do you draw that line? And that’s just for physical disability. I’m not even getting into my neurodivergence, and all the places that fuzzily shades into what’s considered normal.

*sigh*