Usually I have a very wide audience in mind when I write posts – parents, carers, colleagues, and anyone who’s curious about Tourettes, whether they have experience of tics or not. Today, though, I’m writing for a specific group of people – anyone with Tourettes who’s just been made to feel worthless for ticcing by a stranger.…

It’s been a bumpy start to the year so far but things have finally started getting back on track. My hands are doing much better and on Wednesday I was able to start using my much-loved Trekinetic wheelchair once again. It felt brilliant to be back in control and able to get around under my own steam.…

In September last year Touretteshero was awarded a Red Nose Day Grant. The funding came from The Evening Standard’s Dispossessed Fund and Comic Relief who’d teamed up to support London organisations working to improve mental and physical health and wellbeing.

This award’s been crucial in enabling us to continue to keep our website up and running.…

Today’s been a great day. The weather may have been utterly miserable, but I’m in a buoyant mood.

I ran a training session for front-of-house staff at Tate Britain in preparation for an event we’re putting on in collaboration with them.…

Last June I wrote about going to the dentist for a check-up – I explained that he’d decided my teeth needed a scale and polish but that it’d have to be done under sedation because I move around so much when I’m not out cold.…

When my hands stopped working at the start of the year I wrote about how my carers were helping me wash and it meant I’d never been cleaner.

My hands are still not quite right but they’re much better than they were, so I’ve gone back to bathing in the way I used to –sitting by myself on the bottom of the bath under the shower, with a buzzer to call for help if I need it.…

Disability, like so many areas of life, has a lot of associated acronyms. Here are some examples:

SEN – Special Educational Needs
DLA (being replaced by PIP) – Disability Living Allowance (and Personal Independence Payment)
AAC – Augmentative Alternative Communication
PECS – Picture Exchange Communication System
ASD – Autistic Spectrum Disorder

There are also conditions associated with Tourettes that are most commonly referred to by their acronyms, including:

ADHD – Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
OCD – Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
ODD – Oppositional Defiant Disorder

I’ve described before how I’ve developed my own acronyms to describe different features of my ‘ticcing fits.’…

As regular readers will know, there’s been a bit of a backlog with my pigs (the pig shaped rubber dog toys I’m given by the Pig Fairy to mark a day without a ticcing fit).

I wrote last week about the arrival of the amazing Disco Pig but noted I was still expecting both 18th Century Pig and Grey Pig.…

No sooner had I written about the piggies I was waiting for (my reward from the Pig Fairy for ‘ticcing-fit-free’ days) than one of the overdue three arrived.

The reason for the delay was clear – the Pig Fairy’s evidently a creative genius, and art on this scale obviously takes a long time.…

It’s exactly a month since Boxing Day when the muscles in my hands mysteriously went into spasm and seized up.

There’ve been many times over the last 28 days when writing this blog has rescued me from feelings of desperation, when it’s helped me make sense of difficult experiences, and when it’s given me a place to share the practical solutions, support and friendship that’ve made a challenging time manageable.…