The tiny coiled serpent revisited, Part 2
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- May 11, 2025
- 75
Last week found us updating George’s MMR, DTap and Hep A vaccines. He was living on a military base in Mexico when he would’ve received his first ones as a small child, but his shot record is murky at best. He bears the smallpox vaccine mark on his arm, as most of us from that slice of time do, but his health is so important, especially after experiencing a quintuple bypass last year. Why would I want him to risk getting measles, of all things. Something that was declared eradicated in the year 2000 A.D.
I’m sharing the second part of my Tourette’s story today. The cure for childhood diseases is already available in vaccine form via settled science. Tourette’s and the plethora of neurodivergent disorders will never be fully understood if they are not fully researched. There is no cure for it, and you cannot prevent it. Learning to live and operate within it — living our best lives — is the only way, but only if it’s recognized and not hidden away to languish.
My case was not a severe one, and as I got older, the symptoms lessened. I learned that if I centered my thoughts on the base of my skull, where all the urges emanated from, I could contain them there if I focused calmly. The most noticeable tics disappeared one by one, and soon there were stretches where even I would forget I had the disorder.
There was only one tic that remained, and it was one that remains today. I am an avid reader, and my children noticed when they were very young that when I read a book, I placed the very center of it up to my nose and inhaled. If my nose wasn’t centered directly in the middle, I would have to do it again until it was right. The tics and urges don’t allow you to do it wrong. My kids would giggle and tell me to “stop smelling my books,” and I would smile.
I believe a child’s biggest advocate is their parents, and often it is the mother who first notices anything amiss. That’s the way of things. When my son was small, I noticed him fidgeting and rotating his neck in a repeating fashion. The coiled, small animal in the cortex of my own neck fidgeted right along with him as I took moments out of my day to watch him carefully.
Moments of stress or tiredness still let me feel the anxious tics I had tucked away so many years before, but I could now control them with concerted and calm effort. When he grew agitated, the fidgeting grew worse, and I knew he, as well, had a mild case of what I had passed on to him.
I began to pick him up when it became bad, the edges of his brain rough and ragged, and sat with him, my arms around him, on a bed or the floor. I would let him lean into me, and in a soft, soothing tone, I would tell him to feel whatever is making him anxious. Then I would tell him to focus on it, moving it to the place in his neck from which it was coming. Then I would have him visualize it becoming smaller and smaller and smaller until it was a teeny, tiny pinprick of feeling.
We would sit like that for 20 minutes until I could sense him become calm and steady. He learned to control the tics and urges young, and I never had to take him to a doctor for it. Both of us had mild cases that were controllable, and that isn’t the case for all. I always felt very fortunate to be able to say that.
It’s a misunderstood disorder, one that jokes are made readily about. Had I suffered from the more vicious case of it, which included coprolalia (swearing uncontrollably) or loud vocal tics, it would have been a much harder load to bear. I most often don’t bring up I have the disorder, even when breezy jokes are thrown around bearing its name. I should, but I don’t.
Maybe speaking about it here is where I will do the talking, letting it out of the small box I keep it in between my shoulders. Every so often, I let it out, where it travels down my back and into my arms, the old tension electric most often during a time of busyness or worry. I’m thankful I can wrap it slowly back up, spooling it back inside my frame where it resides, dormant yet there.
It should see the light of day, just like the many other disorders that are kept in a gray area — a sunken place — afraid to be revealed. We need to bring to light this side of medicine that is disdained and kept hidden as a dirty secret. It should be treated with the care it deserves.
Today, I expose mine to the light.
Melissa Herrera is a reflective writer who captures the beauty and sorrow of change. With a career spanning 14 years as an opinion columnist and the publication of two books, she resides in Stark County with her husband and four cats. She writes to preserve memories. You can reach her at junkbabe68@gmail.com.