There is ONE benefit

I live a pretty happy life, most of the time, despite being constantly frustrated by either my real limitations or the limitations other people assume I have. Many of the things I have in my life I would not have if it weren't for this disease and so I even can be grudgingly grateful for it. However there is also a side of me that is always wondering what I would have been like, what my life would have been like, without getting sick. I had many dreams that will never be fulfilled. Some were silly things, some were things that don't really matter, and some were huge things. Many were career related. I always thought I would earn a PhD, for example. I had it all figured out, what specialization I would choose, where I would go to school, and even when I had to start to avoid taking the graduate record exam a second time. (Once was plenty for someone who hates to sit still). At that point I was so sick that even thinking of school would have been ludicrous. I wanted to do research, as I really enjoyed that in school, and because receiving notification that an article I had written was accepted for publication was one of the most exciting days of my life. Again, that's beyond my abilities as I could never stay organized enough to gather data and use it appropriately. There were other dreams, and now I know that many will never happen. And I'm mostly ok with that because I have no choice, and because other things replaced those things in my life.

However every year at this time there is compensation. Every year I gather heaps of receipts and a calculator and settle in at the computer to spend my annual hours on TurboTax. Every year I get to the place where it suggests entering medical expenses and I laugh. You have to spend more than 7.5% of your income on medical expenses. That's never even close to a problem. So far I've blown that number away by $1200 this year and I still have at least $300 to add. In fact my counseling expenses alone cover nearly the entire amount and that's before my $700 of meds and co-pays for the psychiatrist and family doctor and the extensive labwork I have to have done 2 times each year or more, costing several hundred dollars. Nor does it include the special glasses I have to have thanks to side effects.

And so, for the entire year I have no money thanks to illness. But in a few weeks I will suddenly, gloriously, get the biggest tax refund in the world!