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Dr Beech was a lot younger than I had anticipated, but he obviously knew his stuff - it took me nearly three months to get in for an appointment. I got there very early just to be certain I found the rooms in time. After waiting for 45 minutes in the lounge, I was called in to see him. Lots of questions were asked, and he asked me to "do" my tics (which I hated, coz once I manage to stop a tic, just doing one more time can start another cycle), then got me to walk across his room first on my toes, then on my heels. Try it, it's quite difficult! An hour and a half later, I walked out of his rooms, just about floating on air. I had moderate Tourette Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder and mild Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. It was May 3, 2000, and I was 23 years old. I wanted to shout it to the world, tell everyone that I had a neurological disorder that could never be cured, but was damn happy just to know what it was. I was so happy, I donated blood. Not that I hadn't done it before, but I hadn't thought about it for a while. When I got home, I told everyone. Mum, Dad, my sister, the dogs...I wanted everyone to know how relieved I was. I rang Steph and told her and she suggested a bottle of champagne for the ticcers. That made 3 of us now with formal diagnoses of TS (Marcus's youngest brother Brodie was diagnosed a year after Marcus). I'm sure Steph has TS, but she doesn't think she needs a diagnosis, she knows. I thought that for a long time too, until Danny provoked me into seeing Dr Beech. Yes, I sent him an email telling him that I thought he'd be interested to know that I had been formally diagnosed, so there! I know I'll never get rid of my tics. I tried medication for a while but the side effects were worse than the tics. Sometimes it gets incredibly hard to stay positive, especially when I'm ticcing like a clock and people in the street stare at me like I have a red nose and funny wig on. It's also really sobering to think that when I have children, there is a 30-50% chance that they'll have some sort of tic disorder. My amazing boyfriend, Jim, knows about my TS - after spending 2 weeks agonising over when to tell him, he noticed me ticcing. It was our last night together before he went back to the UK and I was feeling the pressure just a tad. We were walking through a shopping centre to the cinemas and he said, "you're making funny little noises". I told him I'd tell him about it later and he accepted that. A few weeks after he went home, I explained that I had TS, and he said, "oh yeah, I know about that". And that was that. For those of you who are wondering, Danny and I have managed to patch up our differences. I think he understands now how hard it was for me. At the risk of sounding like a victim of domestic violence, he's not a bad person - I pissed him off when he was already hurt and confused and things blew way out of proportion. I hope he reads this, if only to hear my tacit apology for being nasty when I should have been supportive. Well, that's about all I have to say for now. If you've made it this far in one sitting, you probably don't have ADD! Not everybody experiences TS the same way. This is my account alone, and some people will relate to some aspects, while others will recognise none of it. I hope this epic saga has educated you a little bit, amused you a little bit, and made you think a lot. Thanks for reading. << |