Pretty soon after the actual diagnosis of Tourette's, vocal tics began. Whether it was the power of suggestion or just the natural course of events is debatable, but it happened. They began as malformed unpredictable thoughts. For example, seeing my dog would make me think about having tics that sounded like a dog - a few minutes later I started growling and barking! It's a true story, I remember my poor dog looking so confused as to what was going on. In fact, I even remember beatboxing about 8 measures worth of music totally involuntarily!
After a while the vocal tics settled on a regular pattern of gibberish words. I'd blurt things like "tertabidable blibl!" and stuff like that. It was so odd because I always knew exactly what I had just said and even how one would go about spelling them, even though they were nonsensical words.
I remember the first day of my high school Senior English class, asking my teacher to let me stand up and explain my condition to the class. She had been planning an 'ice breaker' type thing anyway, so she let me go first. I stood up, told the class my name and favorite ice cream flavor, then said something along the lines of "I recently developed Tourette Syndrome. It's new to me, so I'm just as confused about it as you guys are. So you may hear me make noises and stuff, but that's just my Tourette's." I think a lot of people were particularly moved by the part about it being new to me, and all were understanding. In the same class, I did my final presentation about why disabilities awareness should be taught in public schools. As an example of what this might look like, I made a video explaining two disorders, Tourette Syndrome and Albinism. I explained Tourette Syndrome and an Albino friend of mine helped with the second part. When I gave my presentation in front of the class, everyone clapped really loudly and a few girls even started crying! I think I lost that video file before I could get it on YouTube, which is unfortunate.
Another significant moment happened one day in Wind Symphony class. It was towards the end of rehearsal and people where packing up. All the sudden I felt a vocal tic coming on, different than any of them before. I had been ticcing "
shhh- shhh-" every so often, but it finally finished itself:
"shhhit!" it wasn't loud, and probably sounded like any other explative.
I knew it was involuntary though, which is what made it so wierd. Somehow, halfway across the room in the trombone section, my best friend Fletcher heard it and somehow understood the significance. He and I locked eyes across the room -
"was that what I thought it was??" his face said. And alas it was - the dreaded coprolalia, the involuntary blurting of socially inappropriate things. Fortunately this episode only lasted about two days. For more, check out the post titled "
Coprolalia."
I worked with a psychologist, Dr. Carl Mumpower in Asheville, to learn strategies to reduce the tics. We made up a technique we called "Psychido," a play on the martial art form
aikido. In aikdido, the idea is to use the opponents energy to bring him down using as little force as possible. I learned how to relax and ignore the tics; I let them flow freely through my mind without actually being expressed. Once I learned this, I soon found that the vocal tics were fairly easy for me to control the vocal tics and greatly reduce the physical tics. Now I don't have to consciously think about it as much, the psychido comes somewhat naturally.
Life moved on and I started heading towards college. I began meeting other Touretters online, like Catherine, Faith, and Jimmy "Tyrannasaurus Rets." Each of us at different stages of our lives and in different parts of the world (US and UK), I felt a connection to each of them. We could talk about our experiences, and yet at the same time it wasn't perfect. All of us had differenct experiences with their Tourette's which affected how each felt towards it. I noticed very quickly that I had a very optimistic outlook on things since I had developed it after I had already settled into my high school social life and personality.
When I went to college I was able to get a single room as a disability accomodation. The logic was that I need a place to go and be able to relieve tics or stress without the worry of a roommate, or to keep him awake at night twitching (even though I don't twitch in my sleep). The plan was admittedly half legit and half a plot to not have to deal with a roommate, but there were a few nights where I got so stressed out and twitchy that having a roommate would have been bad. In that case, I guess it was worth it!
My father does public speaking on ethics part time, and he encouraged me to think about speaking publicly about having Tourette's. I liked the idea, but never really had any place to go about it. I thought it would be great if I were able to make jokes about it, jokes from
my point of view. Tourette's is the funny disease, because cursing randomly is always funny, right?! I thought that by making real jokes I could educate people
and make it fun! My opportunity came knocking with the Carolina Comedy Commission put on their big comedy weekend. They had various comedic events that all led up to a stand up show including Wyatt Cenac, Maria Bamford, and Lewis Black. At the last minute, I saw a sign advertizing a student stand-up competition that weekend. I had missed the deadline for sign ups but I emailed anyway and made it into the line-up. I threw an act together and practiced it in front of my dorm's housekeeper (Joseph) a couple of times, and once in front of some friends. You can see the final result on YouTube under the name
Crosa Stands Up. Th next day I saw Lewis Black walking around the campus of UNC. He didn't recognize my face from the competition, but he recognized my tics. Turns out he was there watching the competition. He told me about a movie he saw once about a guy who had Tourette's, even though he "couldn't remember the name of that
ffffah-king movie." It meant a lot to me that he reached out like that - and that he watched my comedy bit!
Speaking of friends, I just want to throw in that my friends are SO awesome! They're always supportive of me and (almost) everything I do! A special shout out to Bruce, Josh, Maryam, my PMA brothers, and my [then] girlfriend Charlene. There are tons and tons of people that have helped me over the years, but way too many to name!
Check out Part IV for more. I went back and separated them months later into logical sections, so some comments may be referring to things said in that one!
