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Up until this point, my tics had been a private thing between my parents and I. My sister was too involved in her own tortured world of drugs and self-harm to notice what was going on in her big sister's life, and my extended family just accepted that what I did was relatively normal. Of course it seemed normal - there are eight of us in the extended family with tic disorders, ADHD and OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). At this stage though, we didn't realise that there was a name for our "eccentricities". It came to some sort of a head when I went to see the musical "42nd Street" with my parents and aunt Stephanie. I couldn't stop ticcing, probably due to the excitement of being in the dark watching a live show and knowing the words to all the songs. When we got home afterwards, Steph asked me how long I'd had my "beep". I thought she was asking about my period, and I said, "you should know, Mum had to borrow money from you to buy pads and tampons!". She just about fell over laughing, saying that if she'd meant my period, she would have bloody well said period! I was so embarrassed - my male cousins were right there and listening carefully. "No, that noise you make, you know - that "beep, beep", she said, imitating my tic. The world dropped out from under me and I flushed right to the roots of my hair. My tics were being acknowledged and questioned and I was scared of what was coming next. Of course, being the self-absorbed little shit I was, I had been totally oblivious to the tics displayed not only by my mother, but those of my aunt Steph and her son Marcus, who was a dancer. She explained that at school she had exhibited quite severe tics and was diagnosed with Sydenham's Chorea although she never believed the diagnosis. Marcus was now ticcing quite badly and she was concerned for him. His tics are now worse than mine, but at the time I thought I was the most obvious ticcer. Steph took Marcus to various doctors and psychologists, but it wasn't til 1997 that a psychologist with half a brain casually remarked, "It sounds like he might have Tourette Syndrome". That was the turning point - Marcus was referred to a neurologist with a special interest in TS, and was diagnosed as having TS, ADHD and OCD all in one day. It was a huge relief for him to know that while the tics couldn't be cured, there was at least a name for it, and treament too. We all started to research TS, wanting to know as much as possible about it. That started a chain reaction. The more we read, the more we recognised - the tics, the depression, the obsessive behaviours, the ADD characteristics...it all added up. Only problem was, we all started to realise that it wasn't just Marcus who had TS. I can't remember when I finally self-diagnosed TS, I just remember thinking, "I know what it is now, I can stop worrying". << >> |