A woman was diagnosed with an incurable condition after "scrunching" her face at a teacher.
Emily Bridges, from Skelmersdale, was 18 when she felt an "overwhelming lack of control" as her head "suddenly started jolting to the side" on the bus to college. Her face was later "uncontrollably grimacing", with her eyes, nose and mouth "scrunching repeatedly" while talking to a teacher. She wondered what was wrong with her and tried to ignore the problem.
But what she first dismissed as a "nervous tick" became undeniable when she started making "a hiccup-like sound" followed by involuntary shouting, word and swearing tics in the following months. Feeling "shame and frustration", Emily said: "You'd think that if you suddenly started making noises and movements totally out of your control, you'd immediately believe there was something medically wrong. But I couldn't fathom that I could have a neurological problem. My mind wouldn't let me accept that possibility."
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Emily could "finally stop tearing [herself] apart" when she was diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome, a neurological condition causing involuntary and uncontrollable vocal and motor tics, after a referral to a specialist neurology and neurosurgery hospital, The Walton Centre, in Liverpool. She told the ECHO: "I now knew what it was, but now I had to live with it. I had accepted that Tourette's was the true diagnosis, but I hadn't yet accepted the dramatic change, the huge mental and physical toll, it would bring to my life."
Her tics vary in severity and can be "very disruptive, tiring and even harmful", but the biggest challenge for Emily, a student at Winstanley College in Wigan, is the stigma attached to Tourette's syndrome. She said: "Too many fail to recognise Tourette's as a real disability and simply see it as 'the funny swearing disease'. Too often, when Tourette's is casually talked about, it's in a joking context. So when some people see it in real life, I'm mocked and my tics are mimicked by people who don't take it seriously as a condition."
She worries about the attention drawn when her arms are "flailing about", her are legs "falling from under", or she starts "suddenly blurting out words or profanities". Once, someone confronted Emily when she had "a swearing tic that looked aimed toward" them, but they didn't believe she had Tourette's when she apologised and explained. Emily said: "I didn't know what else to do but hurry away before I had another provoking tic."
Two years on from her diagnosis, Emily, now 20 and about to start studying fine arts at Liverpool John Moores University, has come to terms with her condition. She finds art therapeutic, using the flow and intuitiveness of the process to pull her into the present moment. Although Emily is worried about her Tourette's being a barrier to pursuing a career teaching fine art at degree level, she said: "I'm determined to work hard, achieve my goals and prove that Tourette's doesn't have to hold me back."
Finally "in a place of acceptance", Emily said she understands Tourette's and the uncontrollable tics are just part of her, not all of who she is, and she hopes others will understand this too. She said: "I now no longer perceive it as the enemy, or resent it for the challenges it brings. I accept it as this part of me that requires compassion, by paying attention to what exacerbates my condition and adapting my day-to-day."
