Tourette’s is a pain. Literally.

As always, I would like to thank everyone who has continued to support this blog and this cause. You are the vessels of awareness that the TS community so desperately needs.

This week’s topic is as the title alludes to. PAIN.

I have said it before, I’ll say it again, and probably 100 more times: Tourette’s is more than tics. It is more than what people see on the surface, and sometimes, even more than what they may observe about your comorbidities.

Sometimes Tourette’s is straight up painful.

Physical tics can cause fatigue and even wear and tear on certain muscles, and even lead to injury in some cases. Vocal tics can put a strain on the vocal cords and cause sore throats or voice loss.

Imagine you go and work out and after doing something such as squats repeatedly; your muscles are sore the next day. You’d probably skip squats the next day, right? With TS, you don’t get a say in when you stop these proverbial ‘squats’ and this can lead to more soreness and eventual injury.

What made me bring up this little nugget of truth is that recently, my neck tic has really started to cause me a lot of issues. I am getting headaches that range from the back of my neck where it meets my skull, and up around my temple. Sometimes they last for days with very little response to OTC pain killers, and it took me a while to connect the two events. At first, I’d get one maybe once a month and then they’d disappear for a long while. Now, I’m getting them multiple times a month and the duration and stress they are causing has reached a level that I am going to bring them up to my doctor this week.

Part of me wanted to do this blog for the usual reason, which is to spread awareness. The other part, admittedly, wants to see if anyone else reading has brought up a tic related injury or concern to a doctor, and if they were able to give them any decent referrals? Is there something I should be looking for in response to this? I’m nervous about it, despite the fact that my GP is very personable and has never brushed aside a single issue I’ve brought up.

This is Tourette’s, my friends. It’s a cycle of tic, react, stress, adjust, rinse and repeat.  I wanted to let you in on that as I feel it, again, is real. It’s the personal side of the disorder that need’s to be brought to the world’s attention just as much as the definition of the disorder itself.