Today Tim Howard
released a section from his book about his life with Tourette’s. In it he says,
“Next
came the tics. Each started the same
way: with an uncomfortable sensation in some part of my body- a heightened
awareness, an urge. The feeling could be
relieved only by some specific motor action.
I started blinking, for example – forceful, deliberated blinks that I
couldn’t stop. I began to clear my
throat over and over. Then there were
facial jerks. Shoulder shrugs. Eye rolling.
With each of them it was the same pattern: that awful sensation welling
up, the one that could only be relieved, inexplicably, by some action. As soon as I did it, I felt normal again. Seconds later, the cycle would repeat. Terrible
sensation. Buildup of stress. Action. Relief. In school, teachers snapped at me
– sit still. Stop clearing your throat. Other kids laughed. What’s going on
with your face? At home, mom stayed quiet, but I could feel her watching. I saw
how her eyes zeroed-in on whatever part of my body I’d moved, the flicker of
concern that passed over her face. I hated that I couldn’t knock it off, be a
little easier on a woman who deserved some peace of mind. But, of course, that
was impossible.”
I think this is a fantastic way to describe what Tourette’s feel
like and how it makes you feel. Tics are
something that I, and anyone else with the disease, can’t control. As a child you feel guilty and embarrassed of
you tics. Like Tim states, you want to
stop, but there is nothing you can do.
Tim
continues on to talk about when he first met with a neurologist, he says, “So
now we had a name for my urges, but not much else. There was no reliable
treatment or cure. Some children did extremely well on medication; others moved
from cocktail to cocktail, each one causing different side effects to little
avail. But the doctor explained some other things, too – curious things. He
said that he had seen some examples of people with these disorders having some
special gifts – an ability to hyper-focus, to stick with a task until it’s 100%
mastered. He had also seen a kind of hyper-sensitivity – an ability to see and
feel and smell things that others couldn’t.
As we walked out of the office, he said, almost as an
afterthought, “I’ve been doing this a long time, and there’s one thing I’m
absolutely sure of: with every challenge a kid faces, there’s some flip side. I
have no way to prove it, but I believe this: there’s always a flip side.”
I think there is a flip side.
For Tim, it was sports. That is
when his tics vanished and the game had his full attention. For me, it is dance or anything on stage. I believe that everyone with Tourette’s just
needs to find their one thing. It
changes the your whole world when you do.
When I dance or perform on stage I’m living in a new world. I’m living in the moment and enjoying every
second of it. Tim ends by explaining how
sports was his thing, he says, “But it was true what the doctor said about an
ability to hyper-focus – at least when it came to sports. I watched a
documentary about Pelé, then spent hour upon hour in the backyard trying to
master his techniques – stepovers, cutbacks, stop-and-gos. I practised day
after day, sometimes not even hearing my mom when she called me in for dinner.”
These words are
from Tim’s book, The Keeper: A life of
Saving Goals and Achieving Them.
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