One Small Step for a Nerd; One Giant Leap for Mankind.

Greetings people of Earth, we come in peace.

  By we I mean myself, Amy, your typical teenager living in a small town, and my perpetual best friend.
A bit of information about myself:
  I'm 15 years old and I live in a the small village of Dexter, MI.
I go to Dexter High school-soon to be a Junior- I am involved in 4-H (training llamas) with possibly the best group of people I have ever met; I'm a Cadet in the Civil Air Patrol (http://www.gocivilairpatrol.com); I volunteer with the Wheelchair Hockey League (WCHL, http://www.thewchl.com) which my boyfriend plays goalie for and where I've met some of the greatest people ever.  I coach wrestling with the Dexter Wrestling Club, I love to do Power Lifting with my school, I am co-founder and president of the Student Advocates Club, and I intend on doing Student Council, the fall play, and possibly Yearbook this year. 

I also happen to live with Tourette syndrome, my best friend.

"Tourette syndrome?  Isn't that where you swear all the time?"
Nope, far from it.  Tourette syndrome is a neurological disorder that, due to a lack of chemicals in the brain, causes a person to tic.  A tic is a motor movement (body) and vocalization (noise) that is uncontrollable and repetitive. 
First discovered in 1885 by Georges Gilles de la Tourette it has gathered barely no public awareness.
Examples of Motor Tics:

• Hopping
• Clapping
• Blinking
• Facial Movements
• Shoulder Shrugging
• Neck Movements
• Arm/Leg Movements 
• Head Jerking
• Etc.

Examples of Vocal Tics:

• Whistling
• Grunting
• Clucking
• Accents
• Squealing
• Barking
• Swallowing
• Coughing
• Humming
• Etc.

  Pretty much any movement or noise your body can make can be a tic.  There are no two people with Tourette syndrome (TS) that have the same tics.  Males are 3/4 more times affected than females and there are 200,000 cases of full blown TS in the USA alone.
  With TS also comes the greater chance of having AD/HD, ADD, OCD, ASD, Autism, Aspergers, Learning Disabilities, Anxiety, Depression, or Sensory Processing issues.

The usual example in the media of TS is that that we do nothing but swear.  That is NOT true.  To be diagnosed with TS you have to have at least 2 motor tics and 1 vocal tic for at least a year.  There is a rare form of TS where a person has the compulsion to say the most inappropriate thing in the moment.  This is called, Coprolalia, which affects 13% of people with TS.

Tourette syndrome sounds like a bummer right?  It can be hard to have sometimes, but for myself, it's a blessing.  It comes with a lot of benefits as well (we'll get into that later).  Not to mention you can't lose me...

There's one thing that with TS I cannot do...
                      Play hide-n-seek... but I never was good at that anyways!

I think that's enough for now, goodnight and advocate!
-Amy "Twitchy" Moorman