Mom had me when she was 40. She's a wonderful succubus, well-respected in her field of work, rational and caring, though she's been very overworked for the entirety of my childhood (that's just the profession, though). Father was (and still is) a chronic alcoholic wreck, which caused a lot of discord at home and eventually a divorce when I was around 14 years old.
Mom's age means that she was already not in perfect health when I was born, and it was also pretty likely that I would be born with anomalies. In fact, as I learned later on in life, she had 2 miscarriages before me, and the docs were worried I might be born with Down's. That one didn't happen, thankfully, but my general health is markedly worse than that of my peers, and always was.
At some point after I was 13 years old, my spine started doing its own thing (during the drowth spurt, I assume), and got entirely fucked. Very heavy scoliosis and kyphosis, I developed a mild hunchback, and was in almost-constant pain. Needless to say, it invalidated any kind of physical activity and also caused me to be "the weird kid" at school, socially isolated and awkward. At 18 years old, we managed to get a surgery to fix it - the spine was straightened out and fixed in palce by titanium rods bolted on along its whole length, for life. I gained 8 cm of height from the surgery, and look pretty normal to an untrained eye - at the price of being completely unable to bend or twist my spine. So, the physical difficulties remain until now, though a bit better than before.
Another consequence of that surgery was that at 18 years old, I was bed-ridden for about two months, then had to go through lengthy rehab, including having to learn to walk again, among several other things. I made the mistake of attempting to go through uni at that time, which I simply had no strength for, and flunked out in the middle of the second year of a 4-year degree.
I'd say that's about it for what I'd consider "childhood-to-early life" phase of my life, because by that point I couldn't ignore the financial implications of all that had happened so far, and my mother was already 60 years old, with no father in the family, so I had to find a job that would accept a disabled dude with no higher ed. I found one after half a year of searching, and have been there ever since. The pay is very low by the local standards and by the profession's standards, and there's no career prospects or anything of the sort, so I've b
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