Were you lucky in the "genetic lottery"? Why? Why not?

In some respects yes, but in one major respect, no definitely not.

I'm an intelligent, creative, rail thin without trying (yes I know calories in calories out, my body just never requests more calories than it needs,) guy who looks absurdly young for being 27, and I have a "cute" look (not hot, mind you, I'm cartoonish looking :\ but I'm gay so it works well enough,) and I'm physically very healthy, and I never get sick - but I was born with a gene that would later ruin my life.

I have a disease called PANDAS. Basically, when I was 7 I got strep throat and my body's auto-immune reaction severely damaged a part of my brain (my caudate nucleus) and the end result is a disease that is, for all intents and purposes, symptomatically identical to severe/disabling OCD - which I'm legally disabled by (official diagnosis is OCD as PANDAS is not in the DSM yet, but PANDAS is universally accepted in the OCD specific branch of psychology.) I'm 27, live at home, and spend every waking second of my day on compulsions. I'm even doing some as I type this. I rate a 40/40 on the Y-BOCS and have been since I was about 20.

I never went to college, I dropped out of high school, and today I pretty much never leave my house - all because I got strep throat when I was 7 and had an extremely rare gene.

I don't feel sorry for myself anymore. I'm way beyond that point in my life. I just want it to end (I don't mean suicide,) but getting help is a lot harder than you would think. No medication I've ever tried has helped (except benzos, but that's only a temporary solution) and without meds CBT is extraordinarily hard when you're high on the Y-BOCS.

I'm trying to get gamma knife surgery to fry my caudate nucleus as this is thought to be an extremely effective treatment. I won't have a caudate nucleus anymore, so there will be some complications, but the vast majority of people who have this done experience enormous symptom relief, and some become symptom free. It feels weird to think this way, but if I could just live as a 30/40 that would be enough. I could achieve things in my life and finally stop being such a leech on everyone around me. Just ten points on the Y-BOCS.

I'm rambling.

tl;dr: I lucked out in a ton of ways but have brain damage because of a gene and now I am legally disabled by OCD.

/r/AskReddit Thread