a former colleague and friend has acted to stem the tide of "I have a disabled friend, and she doesn't care/thinks it's funny," coming from Camp Kelly.(Hey, we're not all the same, but if any of us have had a taste of diagnostic hell, we wouldn't wish it on...Megyn Kelly.)
My disability is on the diagnosable side, but it still took a year for doctors to find it for my parents, which of course, being one, I don't remember, but it was probably complicated by the doctors looking at my mom and seeing a crazy blonde hippie who didn't finish college. Even though her sense of "Yeah, she babbles and everything, but shouldn't she be...I don't know, *moving* and stuff?" was pretty bang-on accurate(although I can do a few things that people at, well, let's say my documented ability level, tend not to be able to, so even once you get one, it's not always a roadmap.)
Even the expensive specialist made my parents look up "cerebral palsy" in their Funk and Wagnalls(No, we were a Britannica family...it's just fun to picture the Laugh-In of it all...Mom as the Special Needs Sock It To Me Girl) I don't remember being diagnosed but I do remember playing with a lot of failed equipment experiments, including the walker I decorated with crayons.
When I was twenty, I went to my first love's family party and got pinkeye from his niece. Which, by itself would be both frustrating and gross because I am too uncoordinated to put my own drops in and licensed housing doesn't exactly pay caring-nurturer wages even when everyone involved is not twenty and glad not to be wearing the stupid hat from Del Taco anymore. Even placing my face so someone else could do the drops could be challenging sometimes. (Literal *decades* later, I found out that eye drops are sulfa, to which I'm enormously, itchingly allergic. Hope Christina's answer doesn't take this long, but I hope the resolution is complete.)
Back in the nineties, though, they just think that, well, it takes a couple tries, with possibly a side of "She's a crip--maybe she's not clean, picking stuff up with her spazzy little fingers," so I get drops again, and some ointment, and part of every school day is spent thinking "Must not scratch face," even though I want to more than I want to masturbate, even with an absolutely *gorgeous* philosophy major in creative writing with me.(He might not be cute anymore, or even alive, but I still wonder what would have happened if I'd been confident when we met.)
I went to an eye specialist who told me, essentially, "Inside your eyes is fine...why are you here?"
And I say "Your guess is good as mine," and pick up more stuff that makes my skin worse.(The stuff that helped cost like $50 and my insurer didn't pay. Clearly, I was running some kind of concession because nobody has eye infections that long, so I bought that. And not much else. For about eight months.)
I don't get sick often, for being broken, but boy does it turn into a saga when it happens. The dermatologist that made the Itching Cycle of Hell stop was my hero for a long time, even though I hardly ever wear make-up anymore cause she made me all Throw The Bums Out about what touches my flesh.
And I know that doesn't touch what Christina Applegate is living right now.
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