| 20 mar 2001 call me bubbly.� effervescent.� because i have gas.� shit, i'm lactose intolerant again. i absolutely love milk.� whole milk.� but i haven't had it in a long time, mainly because i'm so damn lazy to wash my mug afterwards. but this morning, i went to mcdonald's and ordered two breakfast meals, so i had two little cartons of milk.� yum.� but, i'm paying for it now.� man.� this means i have to start forcing myself to drink milk again to get back my tolerance.� it's going to be painful for a while. ----- thanks to raymond for supporting me and my website.� he was pretty bold and e-mailed a couple questions about me and my tourette's syndrome (TS).� unlike before, i don't mind talking about it to anyone who asks.� i even have an informational pamphlet about TS posted up on my wall in my cubicle.� any question is fair game.� i kinda enjoy talking about having this weird disorder. but, i'm so glad that i don't have it bad anymore.� i know i am definitely underappreciating my lack of tics these days.� taking things for granted is something i have to work on. ever since i started working in 97, my tics just got worse and worse, until fall 1999 when i had two nervous breakdowns in two months.� i was completely ruled by my TS.� i stopped eating, and i found it even hard to walk because any action would set of a storm of tics.� the only comfort i had was sleeping, because that is the ultimate accelerator of time.� but every time i was awake, i tried so hard to keep myself from ticcing that i couldn't focus on anything else.� needless to say, i cried a lot during those times. last year, i found two things that seemed to help.� chiropractic and haldol.� the latter is a strong neuroleptic medication for psychotic people.� i get a macabre feeling of fascination from the fact that i'm on haldol... i call them my "psycho pills." but, when i was i higher dose, i found out that this stuff is strong shit... at 2mg a day, i started hearing noises in my head.� i couldn't sleep, and any bit of sunlight would wake me up, so i wound up getting about 3 hours of sleep a day.� my head was buzzing with static, and i felt like i was outside of my body.� my vision blurred, especially at night.� that was a pretty fucking scary time. but hey!� i noticed that i didn't tic at all.� talk about trade offs!� i mean, pick your poison... natural hell, or drug-induced hell. so.� i'm glad i'm better now.� i still have the occasional tic or two, but i'm no longer filled with deadly anxiety about meeting people or going to crowded places like movie theaters, restaurants, or concerts.� not to mention that driving is much safer for me now.� when i got my california license, some DMV worker noticed my tics and thought that i was an epileptic. sigh. there's a good movie called _the tic code_ that just came out on home video.� it stars gregory hines as this jazz musician with TS who befriends a little kid with TS as well.� it's pretty poignant, and it has a great soundtrack as a side bonus.� i went up to san francisco last september just to watch it in a theater.� man, i cried so much during the flick.� at the time, i had just come out of another bad TS spell, and seeing the movie was like seeing me and my worst fears and self-hatred pastered all over the silver screen.� of course i was one of the first people who bought the DVD from amazon.com.� (the only bummer is that it's pan and scan, not letterboxed.) TS is a curse.� some researchers say that it offers some advantages in possibly higher intelligence, and i admit that i used to have a very quick and active mind.� and getting good grades was never hard for me, even at stanford.� i mean, i started college at age 16!� i guess i could attribute that to TS.� so yay.� i think. but now that i'm no longer in an academic setting, i find that i don't need to rely that much on brain power (partially due to laziness), so i just focus on the negatives of TS.� and those are some pretty horrific things.� i think my TS had a lot to do with why karine and i broke up; i was just too paralyzed over going out and doing stuff because i was always afraid of being in public. i used to think that i would never have kids because TS has been demonstrated to be an inherited disorder.� i don't want my kids to suffer the affliction that i have.� but after going through the process of finding the right medication (pimozide, clonodine, nortriptyline, clonazepam, and finally haloperidol), i feel much more positive about coping with TS.� of course, the ideal is not to have to rely on long-term medication, but hey... sometimes you don't have a say in how to deal with life. tourette's syndrome, more than anything else, has been the defining factor of who i am.� it's been the source of my success, silliness, and sorrows. but now, i'm just starting to experience what it's like to break free of that.� and in some way, i am afraid of this newfound freedom in defining myself again. |