Ed's Tourette's

I was a big fan of Mythbusters while it was on the air. The hosts did a good job entertaining while teaching viewers the basics of the scientific method. I always enjoyed episodes where they riffed on a famous movie or made something explode really big-like, or, optimally, made something explode really big-like while riffing on a famous movie. Just like with movie special effects and urban legends, Tourette's Syndrome has a bunch of myths surrounding it. I can't speak with any clinical authority, but I'd like to take a shot at explaining some of them. This list will by no means be exhaustive. 1) There's a popular belief that Tourette's is a childhood condition, which is partially correct while still not telling the whole story. Most, but not all, TS patients become symptomatic in childhood. I started displaying tics when I was 8-9ish, which I believe to be fairly typical. Lots of TS patients grow out of the disorder in their teens and early adulthood, but a recent...

I hope the title of this post didn't give you the idea that I know how to talk to people about having Tourette (Tourette's? I really need to make a decision here) Syndrome. I sure haven't figured it out yet. I could perform an exhaustive mental review to come up with an exact-ish number of people who I know know that I have TS, or I could ballpark it at 15. Ballpark it is. I guess I'd say that everyone who needs to know about it knows about it; my immediate family, some extended family, a few friends and co-workers, and my work's HR guy. And my neurologist.  A very small fraction of my wife's family knows as well, and I'm not sure how big I should be making the circle of people who knows about it. I'm shy about talking about my Tourette's for a couple of reasons. First, I'd have no idea how to start the conversation! Me: How about that weather today, and also I have a neurological condition called Tourette's Syndrome. Other Person: I fin...

I was going to go ahead and not write anything tonight since I got caught up watching the Giants on Monday Night Football. What a waste of a night. Watching them week after week is becoming an excruciating exercise in futility. And yes, I know what "excruciating" means. I tweeted earlier asking if anyone else experienced more mouth and lip tics when their lips are chapped. I know this happens to me, and it's become one of my least favorite parts of late fall/winter/early/spring. My lips will get chapped, and that makes my tics worse. My tics being worse leads to me biting my lips more, which makes them more chapped, which leads to my tics being worse, and so on and so forth. It got really bad last winter, to the point where I had sores on the inside of my bottom lip from biting them so much. This got me thinking about which of my tics are sort of my regular cast, and which ones are the guest stars depending on where I am or what I'm doing or, apparently, which effin...

I spend and waste a lot of time on weighing the difference between pathology and personality when it comes to my actions and behaviors. For instance, I've always been a bad long-term planner. It's possible that I would have always been this way, Tourette Syndrome or not.  It's also possible that the variable, but usually consistent, extent to which my TS has a grip on my minute-by-hour-by-day life keeps me hopelessly rooted in my immediate present. I think my constant concern about and awareness of what my body is doing at any given moment, along with the way my brain gets wrapped up in useless thought loops, sometimes leaves me hyper-aware of the exact moment I'm in. Bad tic days are the worst for this, and today was a good example. I've seen the phrase "bad tic day" bandied about on the Tweeter and in the Facebook groups I'm a member of. For the non-TS patient reading this, it's important to know that not every day with Tourette's is the sa...

I'm back! I'm sorry for missing Thursday's post. My kid has Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease, my wife and I had to pack up for a weekend away, AND the Giants were playing the Eagles that night. Thankfully, my wife, her whole big family, and I had an amazing weekend in Vermont for my sister-in-law's wedding and I'm back feeling thankful and refreshed!  Now onto tonight's really depressing topic!!! Bullies suck. I'm not sure if having Tourette's Syndrome made me a more likely target for bullying, but it sure happened. It was worst for me during high school, when two guys who were ostensibly my friends used to pretty much terrorize me every day. Such was my social standing that I actually hung out with my bullies. If that's not the most pathetic sentence I'll ever write, then I'm afraid for what is. It wouldn't occur to me later, after the damage had been done, that the one guy, who we'll call "Mike", because that's what...

Sometimes I'll think of things that I know would be one half of an interesting blog entry. Nothing revelatory, nothing deeply meaningful. Just stuff that might be interesting to talk about but nothing so in-depth that it could be its own whole entry. Here are two of them. My Tourette's is primarily a pain in my ass, but it is secondarily a curiosity to me. I think about it a whole lot, as you can probably tell by the fact that I'm writing lengthy(ish) essays about it twice a week for around two months now. Thinking about it, though, opens the door for more tics to get in and SEGWAAAAAAYYYYYY!!!! So yeah, I think it's super weird that my tics get worse the more I think about, ponder, and worry about them. I have a friend who has OCD and she says that it's the same way with that. I'd love to see someone research why that happens. Are our brains wired to encourage negative feedback loops the way another person's brain is wired to encourage positive feedback l...

I find myself in an exceptionally good mood tonight. Work is good, marriage is better, and fatherhood is the best. My cousin became a father today, and my brother got some really good health-related news. Also I popped the cork on a really good bottle of red a little while ago. Mrs. Edstourettes agrees. TS or not, things are looking up. I think this is a good time to take a look and see how I got here. Since being diagnosed, it's been a temptation to retroactively view my life through the lens of Tourette Syndrome. One of the questions I often as myself is how much TS has influenced my life and how it would be different A) if I'd been diagnosed earlier and B) if I never had it at all. Let's start with an earlier diagnosis. I said in a few earlier entries that my mom asked my pediatrician about my tics when I was eight or nine (?), and was told that I just had nervous tics and that they'd fade with time. I appreciate her belief that I'd somehow become less nervous ...

I checked out a  list of blog writing prompts  to give myself a running start for tonight's post. This is pretty cool list, and it's a well I envision myself coming back to a couple of times. Without further adieu, I present you with a letter to my 15 year old self. Just a little more adieu, actually: if time travel becomes a thing and 15 year old me ever sees this letter, then I've probably created an awful paradox and destroyed this timeline. Sorry, peeps. Dear Ed, Hey man. 38 year old Ed here. First, the good news. You still have all your hair, the Yankees will win three of the next four World Series, and you have a ton of awesome stuff to look forward to. You haven't even met some of your very best friends yet! Now the bad news: The Eagles have won the Super Bowl, the Red Sox have won TWO World Series (it was even worse that you can imagine), smart phones are only a few years away from totally ruining interpersonal relationships, and those nervous tics the docto...