My name is Johnson. I'm a 22-year-old guy from Tamil Nadu, India. I have Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type 3 (SMN1 gene deletion confirmed). I work full-time as a software engineer, frontend and backend, with two fingers on each hand. When my hands let me, I also play simple casual games on my laptop like Solitaire, Minesweeper, and browser-based puzzle games. Gaming with two working fingers per hand is its own challenge, so I stick to mouse-only or single-key titles that don't need fast multi-key combos.
I'm not writing this to get sympathy. When I got diagnosed I was 16 and I searched online so much for one person like me, SMA from India, doing tech job, having family to support. I didn't find. Now I know Blake Watson and others exist but back then in 2019 from hospital I didn't find them anywhere. I needed to read that someone like me is alive and working. Maybe you also need to read it.
How I got to where I am today
I walked slowly as a kid. I rode a cycle to stay independent until I was 14. I studied hard because my body wouldn't let me keep up any other way. By age 15, I couldn't ride a cycle anymore, and at 16, my knees would buckle and I'd fall in the middle of the road while going to school. That year I went to SCTIMST for tests: ECG, Echo, EMG, biopsy, genetic testing, etc. After 10 days, I got my diagnosis: Spinal Muscular Atrophy (Type 3).
I went back to school and kept going. At that age, I wasn't aware of this disease, and my parents weren't taking it seriously either because they also didn't know how serious SMA was. The doctors at SCTIMST started me on physiotherapy right after diagnosis, stretching, range-of-motion work, and gentle strengthening to slow the contractures in my legs and hips. For a few years I went regularly to a local physiotherapist, and my mother learned the routines so she could help me do them at home on the days I couldn't travel.
I knew my strength, so I decided to work with computers. Next, I chose an engineering degree in college. My classroom was on the 3rd floor. I couldn't climb stairs, so my friend John Thomas carried me in his arms, up three floors, every single day, for four years. I could still walk slowly on the college campus, but he helped me up the bus stairs and college stairs. Because of him, I have a degree. I graduated on March 31, 2025, the first person in my family to graduate from college.
After college, I was placed as a software engineer at a startup company.
In my first year, I typed every line of code myself, and at that time 5 fingers on my right hand and 2 fingers on my left hand worked actively. Over time, my hands started getting weaker, so in my 2nd year of work I used ChatGPT for writing code and debugging errors to boost my productivity. In my 3rd year, my hands got even weaker, with only 2 fingers on each hand actively supporting my work. But by God's grace, these days coding is easy because of Claude Code, which covers 75% of the boilerplate code just by giving it the requirements.
Some mornings I wake up and I can't lift my hands even one inch off the bed. I just lie there and wait for my strength to come back. I don't really walk anymore outside of my home. I can walk inside my home with the support of a chair. I shuffle between rooms holding onto the walls. I can't get up from the toilet without my mother's help. Eating is hard. Some days I'm too tired to finish a meal. Physiotherapy is still part of my routine, passive stretches for my arms, shoulders, and legs to keep the joints from locking up, and breathing exercises to keep my chest mobile. It doesn't bring strength back, but it keeps what's left usable, and on the bad mornings the stretches are what get my hands moving enough to open the laptop.
And yet I open my laptop and I can code, debug, build features, and attend meetings. I do everything a software engineer does, at a slower pace, with fewer fingers, and ten times the effort.
What makes it work
I use AI tools every day. This is the single most important thing. I use AI coding assistants, specifically Claude Code, as my primary tool. I tell the AI what I need, it generates roughly 75% of the code, and I review and test it. I still do the thinking part, the AI just types the stuff my fingers can't. Some people might call this cheating, but for me it's just accessibility, and honestly without it I wouldn't have a career today.
I don't know how many more days my strength will let me continue my work, but I'll keep moving on by God's grace. In the past He gave His grace to me, and I hope my future is also in His hands. Nothing is in my/our hands. One thing: don't be hopeless and don't give up. Until I die, I can defeat anything.
Working from bed: I haven't used a desk in the last year. I use a bed table, shift positions when my back hurts, test apps lying down, and rest my arms between sessions without needing anyone's help. Stop trying to work like able-bodied people. Design your setup around your body. The same setup is what I game on too, lying down with the laptop on a bed table, using only the trackpad for short rounds of card games or match-3 puzzles when I want a break from code.
Flexible hours and remote-only: I work 8 hours a day, not all at once. Working from home isn't a perk for me. It's the reason I can work at all. If you have SMA and you're job hunting, don't compromise on remote. Your career depends on it.
To everyone reading this
SMA is a cruel disease. It keeps taking small things from you one by one, and one day you realize hundreds of things are already gone.
But we are patient too. I type with two fingers and I work from my bed, but I still feed my family, and I'm not going to stop.
If you're reading this from your bed or your wheelchair, wondering if it's worth trying, it is. Find what your mind can do, find the tools that can help you, and fight with everything you have.
Keep fighting.
Happy to talk about working in tech with SMA, accessible gaming setups for weak hands, AI tools for accessibility, or just life with this disease.