Dyscalculia

I have a confession.
I am 26 years old and I still don't know my times tables.
I can barely count.
It wasn't until a few years ago that I realised there was a name for such utter ineptitude with numbers - dyscalculia - and that it is a brain fault rather than stupidity. It's also known as numlexia, but I loathe that word. It is etymologically WRONG.
I wish I'd known about it in primary school when it took me about three years longer than everyone else to get my multiplication certificates, and when my dreadful grasp of numbers and mastery of English meant I was almost labelled special needs.
They then just decided I was a genius...

If I ask the average person to add two small numbers together in their heads - say 5 and 8 - they either know the answer from memory or by very fast calculation. Not me. I have to break each of the numbers into smaller numbers (3 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 3) and then add them together. It takes me a few seconds. I have no idea why my brain won't work in numbers of greater size than three, but it won't and it drives me crackers.
I tried to read a book called Fermat's Last Theorum, which was described as simple to understand for the normal, non-mathematician, folk upon the street. Not I. I gave up about seven pages in.

I love doing logic puzzles, and I'm good at them, until they involve numbers. Then I just cannot do them. I can do simple sudoku by imagining the numbers as letters. Otherwise, numbers are not my friend.

The paradox is that my job has been analysing data, working out percentages and patient numbers from those percentages, for eight years. I could never remember how to work a percentage out, even on a calculator, much to the chagrin of my boss ("How do you work percentages out?" "I just told you" "I know, I forgot"), but the actual numbers represented people and this made them easier to digest and organise.

I also can't tell my left from my right, which is described as a 'symptom' by wikiepdia. The only way I can give directions is by checking my wrists - my right arm has a big scar on it. It's a tiresome affliction and makes navigation take far longer. I am glad I cannot drive.

It is loathsome to be unable to do maths. I am glad on a daily basis that I don't have to do anything like a tax return and I dread the day the boys ask me for help with their maths homework.