The Waxing and Waning of Tourette Syndrome

Doctors had told us that Tourette's Syndrome had kind of a "waxing and waning" effect with tics.  This meant that maybe one day Thumper's tics could be pretty mild, but then another day they could be going wild.  We soon found this out the hard way.  

We took a trip to Arizona to visit family and Thumper was pretty calm most of the time.  He was still gulping and scrunching sometimes, but our family didn't notice it at all.  One thing about Thumper though, is that he is so hyper and running around all the time or screeching or whatever that most people don't notice any of his tics.  It is only in more quiet settings or when you are close by that you would hear his tics or see his facial tics.  But anyway, our trip was pretty mellow, and Thumper was doing fine.  He didn't complain once about his throat or nose hurting because of tics.  

Well, that changed when we got home.  It was a month before school was to start for the fall and all of the sudden Thumper was going crazy.  His tics went haywire and he was out of control.  He was gulping and swallowing and clearing his throat and scrunching up his face like crazy.  

And then there came a new vocal tic.  

This one was somewhat creepy to me.  It was this weird clicking sort of noise or more of a regurgitating type of noise that he would do in his throat.  It reminded me of the way a frog would blow up their throat and make that little croaking noise or something.  In turn, we called this the froggy tic.  It kind of grossed me out.  He started doing this over and over.  Well, it would go gulp, clear throat, froggy tic, or sometimes just froggy tic over and over or gulping over and over, but soon Thumper wasn't just doing it occasionally, he had lost control.  

I remember sitting down with our family to watch a movie late one night and having to turn the volume up louder so we could hear the movie over his tics.  You would think that watching a movie would relax him and he wouldn't be ticking so much, but it seemed to make it worse.  He was gulping and clicking like crazy and it was really difficult to watch the movie with all of it.  It makes me feel bad to think such a thing, but really it was kind of annoying.  Nobody wanted to sit by him.  Poor kid.  

Still his ticking got worse.  At night he was freaking out.  We would go in his room and he was almost causing himself to hyperventilate.  He was ticking so much that he almost couldn't breath.  He was crying as he couldn't stop gulping and swallowing and throat clicking and he just wanted it to stop.  This is when Thumper began telling us that he wanted medicine to make it stop.  He said it hurt so much and he just couldn't stop it.  

Then, what do you do?  Just last week we thought he was doing fine, and now all of the sudden he was in so much pain and so sad.  We had tried the whole "alternative behavior therapy" stuff  (I'll refrain from saying "crap"), that didn't do anything, but we we didn't want to go to medication.  We had read such awful things about it.  But here was our son so sad and freaking out.  We needed to do something.  So the next morning I began looking into finding a new doctor for a second opinion of how to help Thumper.