14 Dec 2011

After watching a documentary about people with Tourette's on the telly the other night, I got into conversation with somebody who I had told I have Tourette's but who had never, to my knowledge, noticed. I'm not a really bad ticker, you see, at least not at the moment, and during the course of the conversation I estimated that I currently do roughly three dozen vocal tics a day - nothing compared to those poor blighters on the telly! But then I thought, is that actually right? How do I know for sure? Was that a wildly inaccurate estimate? A few years back, when I was seriously stressed and ticking like a loon, I tried to keep a diary of all my tics. It was interesting reading, for my missus at least, who would sit there and listen to me read the lists out until she was laughing so much that she could hardly breathe. It also gave me some insight into my ticking pattern - in what situations it got worse, or better, how I was feeling at the time, and so on.

So. I have decided to keep a diary again, to establish how far my tics have really subsided, and to see whether my guestimate is correct. I've also decided to blog my tics this time round, so that you can join my missus in having a laugh. And hopefully this way, because I'm blogging, it will give me the nudge I need to keep up with my monitoring, and who knows what the information will reveal further down the line.

How am I going to do this? I haven't thought that far ahead, so initially I suppose I'm going to do what I did previously with the paper diary - it'll be a day-by-day list of vocal tics, with a few notes on my general well-being that day and other bits and bobs to give it all a bit of context. At some point I may blog about my background history, how the Tourette's has developed since I first started repeatedly clearing my throat at the tender age of 8...

So here we go.

Wednesday 14 Dec 2011.

Started noting tics down mid-afternoon, at work, so this won't be a complete list for the day. Had a really, very rough night last night, not much sleep, which usually indicates that there will be more tics than usual.

Bob

Bob

Bob

Bob

Egg

Bob

Clubfoot

Ninja Trumps

Fruit Farts

Space Walruses

A-bub-a *

Gebbles *

Egg

Bob

Walrus

A-bub-a *

Winkle Chickens

Egg

Bob

Nunnas *

Wibble

Blob

Bob

Nunnas *

Bob

Bob

Fish

Bob

Bob

Bob

Bob

NOTES:

* = nonsense

Words at work were what and where I'd expect - bob and egg, predominantly, when my guard was down (in the corridor or loo or in the street or car), with a few more head nods and blinks than normal at my desk, undoubtedly because I was tired. The words became much more bizarre at tea time, at home, as they always seem to do. Whether that is influenced by the company - two young kids and the missus - I don't know.

More to follow I imagine...