It’s been a little while since I wrote anything about my personal journey here, so I thought I’d get back to it.
My last post on the subject – Side Effects – detailed what happened when the psychiatrist I was referred to decided to throw a boatload of random medication at me because he didn’t have a clue what to do otherwise (oops, sorry, perhaps I should have put a cynicism warning in there earlier …). This post picks up where that left off.
So, I’d resolved to give the fluoxetine a chance, but when I saw no effects other than being overly tired and being less able to focus on things, I quit taking it in February 2014. One of the last things that the psychiatrist did was to refer me to a CBT unit that deals with OCD, ADHD and other related issues. I’ll talk about this in another post, mainly because it’s still ongoing – albeit on hold due to the recent problems with stress.
This time I would like to tell you what happened when my original referral to the neurologist finally came through.
The appointment itself was pretty quick, so I’ll summarise it for easy reading:
Neurologist: So, you’ve been referred for Tourette Syndrome. Tell me about the problem.
I describe my history, along with current symptoms, and the reason I sought help in the first place – the tooth touching/grinding tic that had manifested itself about 6 months previously.
I also describe my experience with the psychiatrist, and the side effects of the medication. There is a good deal of eye-rolling from the neurologist as I tell him this bit, but he’s obviously too polite to say anything about it.
N: Yes, I’d say you have TS, and OCD. You know there’s no point medicating you since anything I give you that will actually stop the tics will also stop you doing pretty much everything else.
Me: That’s fine. I don’t want medication if I can help it. I just wanted to talk to somebody that knows about this, and get an expert opinion and some advice.
N: There is one thing I can do for the tooth problem. Botox.
He then goes on to explain that he would inject me in the jaw (lower jaw, and also upper jaw between my eye and ear). This would weaken the muscles and hopefully reduce the ticcing compulsion.
I give it a bit of thought and say OK. He does it there and then. I say thank you and leave.
That’s about it. The neurologist suggested that it would take about a week to take effect, though I found it was closer to 2 weeks, but that specific tic seemed to go into remission.
It hasn’t disappeared completely and does come back a little from time to time, but it doesn’t seem to stick around like it was doing before, and I’m no longer worried that I’ll destroy my teeth. The permanent headache I had also disappeared.
A few people I’ve mentioned this too have denigrated the botox approach for various reasons. I can only say that it seems to have worked for me. Here’s my theory as to how it works:
Firstly, I had only had that tic about 6 months, not a lifetime, so it may not have been as deeply ingrained in my neural pathways as it is for some people. This may or may not have made it easier to treat in this way.
The Botox weakens the muscles, which in turn reduces the intensity of the physical movements involved in the tic. This in turn means that there is less feedback when the tick is performed. Less feedback means less reinforcement for the tic in the brain, and the whole process that solidifies these tics in our neural pathways (whatever the hell that is!) is undermined, and the tic sort of fades away.
That’s my theory anyway.
A Co-morbid Life 