From whence we came...

It seems I am at the tail end of a rough patch.  The tics are calming down.  They were very bad a couple of weeks ago.  I didn't even notice that they got better but here we are.  So, I'll enjoy this period of relative calm.  And of course I will be back where I was once again, in the future.  That's just the way it works.  I'm 32 years old.  I think I've got this thing down, by now.

When we think of diseases, sicknesses, syndromes; often there is an end to them.  People get better.  People beat cancer.  People get over the flu.  I was watching this HBO series on Alzheimer's.  There was an interview with a child of about ten years old.  He said something like: "My grandfather will have Alzheimer's until...until...he'll always have it."  This kid knows what Alzheimer's is.  He knows it will never go away but for a moment we could see him still grasping onto the fantasy that it will.

I totally relate to that glitch in acknowledgement of the reality of disease with my TS.  I often experience similar moments in which I almost forget that TS is here to stay.  For a second or two I look forward to its end.  And then of course I snap out of it and view the situation from an adult point of view.  There are moments of doubt, disbelief and hope.  It's amazing that I can still feel this way, if for only a moment, this late in the game.

TS does go away.  It will leave me with my last breath.  I will have Tourette Syndrome for as long as I am alive.  Death is the only relief.  And what a bitter reality that is.  For it will take death, where cognition and lucidity are no longer extant, to rid me of the suffering I feel in life.  It is in death (the very absence of everything we need to experience pain) when the suffering will finally take a bow.