Ed's Tourette's

I thought it might be interesting to talk about the effects Tourette Syndrome can have on something as basic as our ability to participate in a conversation. My wife and I have a 2 year old son now, and a huge percentage of our interactions with him are based around helping him learn to speak. He's right on schedule as far as learning goes. He can parrot just about any word he hears, though he hasn't quite mastered the "v" sound yet. It's really endearing when he says, "I luh you!" Verbal communication is so important from such an early age. Yeah, it's important to be able to write coherently, but have you ever heard someone yell, "Quick! Write 911!" No. No you have not. Which is why it can be so frustrating that TS can have such a negative impact on our speech. I try never to speak (HA!) for anyone else in my blog, so I'll stick mostly to my own experience. I have a ton of mouth and jaw tics that interfere with my speech regularly, t...

There are a ton of resources online for parents whose kids have TS, and rightly so. Every child with Tourette who is loved and supported from diagnosis day on is a child who will grow up loving themself, TS and all. Unquestionably good. But what about the opposite situation? What if, on top of all the challenges of becoming a new parent, you're also a person with Tourette Syndrome? I sure don't have all the answers, but I'm going to share my observations, strategies, fears, and coping mechanisms with you here. Away we go! Congratulations! You're going to be a parent! It's going to be great! Awful challenges that turn out to be totally worth it! A strengthened bond with your partner when your baby is crying and you agree to ignore it for another five minutes! Changing diapers, which it turns out never gets less gross! The certain knowledge that sleep is for the weak and that there is, in fact an amount of spit-up you can tolerate on your clothes without getting cha...

Tourette's and marriage go together like a horse and carriage, but the horse just can't stop ticcing and so the carriage is constantly bouncing around and the occupants are being tossed about like a bag of popcorn mid-pop. I'm writing this mostly as an excuse to ask other people how having Tourette Syndrome has affected their marriages and relationships, but I'm also writing it because the more I think about it, the more I realize that my TS has played a prominent role in the shape my marriage has today. I often wonder how that shape would be different if I didn't have TS or if I'd been diagnosed long before my wife and I met and it was a known quantity in my life. Also, my wife is amazing and she deserves a blog post about how just amazing she is. First, some dating background. I fell in love for the first time when I was seventeen, and it was exactly how all the songs said it would be like. Just a life changing, "I want to feel like this forever" f...