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Tourette’s Syndrome

By Stevie Begg

Tourette’s is a neurological disorder that causes tics like squinting, eye rolling; shoulder shrugging, or nasal sounds. A person's tic's can be worse if they are stressed. A person can’t control their tics without medication, and as you get older you are able to control the tics for longer periods of time. Tourette’s Syndrome is usually diagnosed by age 7. There needs to be one motor tic and one vocal tic for more than six months to be diagnosed with the condition.

The different kinds of tics are: Vocal tics, Coprolalia: uncontrolled outbursts of profanity. Echolalia: uncontrolled repeating of someone else, yourself, or a noise you hear, and Motor tics: head jerking, arm twitching, and jaw cracking. With Tourette’s you also have emotional and behavioral difficulties.

Most of you may not have heard of Tourette’s before, but my brothers and I have it. It doesn’t hurt me but it makes me tired and sometimes it interrupts me when I am trying to do things like my homework. Tourette’s is when you do the same thing over and over again. It’s just like a mosquito bite and you just need to scratch it, or a really big sneeze that you can’t hold in.

How I feel about Tourette’s, which I have, is that it’s very difficult to live with. But what I do like about Tourette’s is that it makes me a unique individual.