Happy New Year!

Like it happens every December, the year is coming to a close. As a kid I found this time of year exciting; my sisters and I would try to stay up late to watch the ball drop on TV, as a teenager/young adult I'd go to parties with friends. Now, working full time, married to a woman who works full time, with two small children at home, Dec. 31 is just another day on the calendar. Sure, it's a new year. But it's just a ball slowly being lowered in NYC. It's been the same since long before I was born. And a lot of people use the night as an excuse to dance, party and get plastered, when in reality most of those people do that on the weekends anyway. I'm all for finding a reason to party, but you can get drunk and watch balls drop every Sunday during Cowboys games. No need to stay up late on Dec. 31 for it!

One part of the New Years season that I've never put much into is making new years resolutions. As much as I like hearing women who are not overweight complaining about their goal to lose weight, I've always found it silly to wait til the new year to make a change. I've heard a few people in my life claim they want to stop smoking and they're going to start at the new year. Same thing with losing weight. And I've always thought: Why wait? I understand that Jan. 1 is a good time to start anew, because the calendar is new, the year is new, and most people will spend another 30 days writing 2014 after the date, but what makes Jan. 1 any better to start a goal than Aug. 23 or March 4, or April 31? (Who caught that...? If you plan on starting a new goal on April 31, your goal should be to buy a calendar.) If you want to begin living a healthier life, give up bad habits or whatever you want, do it whenever you're ready, and make that date special to you. If you don't wear your seat belt in a car and you decide sometime in March that you want to begin, do it, and suddenly you have an anniversary to look forward to every March. Make yourself a cake, with a little car on it smashed into a tree made out of whipped icing, and a little person made out of sugar standing next to it and have it say "you're still alive" in your favorite color. Then eat it all. (Then in April you can begin a new goal of not eating so much cake, fatty.)

New Years Eve can be fun. But be considerate of others. When you finally cross that line and start puking before the clock strikes midnight, leave the bar. Nobody in the bar wants to see that. And if you've been begging your girlfriends all night to let you do karaoke and they finally give in and let you, don't. You probably suck and your friends finally gave up on saving everyone's ears in the place. Seriously though, party and have fun but don't drink and drive. Too many innocent people get hurt because of the stupidity of drunk drivers. Know your limits, be smart, let your local police, fire and EMS personnel have an easy night since they'll be on duty, and welcome 2015 with a bang!

Happy New Year!

Where have you been??

Hello again. I'm back!! Some of you may be wondering "why haven't you posted in the last three weeks," and I wondered that myself. I thought maybe it's because I was stuffed from the Thanksgiving feast. But that's not it. My pants are tighter now though... Perhaps my absence is because I was busy as my alter ego, saving the big city and getting the girl. But no. Little Rock is not a big city, and super heroes pants aren't snug. I was actually touring the mid-west United States with a traveling wild-west show as the horse poop cleaner/rodeo clown. I tried to do both jobs at the same time one night during a show, got trampled by a bull and underwent a brain-replacement operation at the state hospital in Phulaschit, Nebraska. The TRUTH is, we've both been working a lot and the two times I sat down to write in the past few weeks, I've had a completely blank mind. Writers block. (wild-west story was better huh?!)

I read an article earlier this year that I found very interesting, but I also found it is a very touchy point for some people. The article was here on Time.com and entitled "ADHD Does Not Exist." See, touchy and controversial right there in the title. A good, interesting read if you have five minutes, but if not it is a behavioral neurologist with over 50 years experience in the field, (dude must be OOOOOLLLLLDLDDD) who has practiced under the thought or pretense that ADHD doesn't exist and that by curing underlying issues, the symptoms of ADHD go away. Now I'm not here to start a rally or upset friends who have kids who, or themselves, have ADHD, so calm down. There have been enough 'movements' started in the last few weeks that we don't need another one. I just read the article and did some more googling (because that's what amateur research is these days) and found that treating underlying issues to cure common symptoms is not an uncommon practice at all. So I took to google and my local yellow pages (again, via google) and thought about applying that to my TS.

I know through my own experience and research that TS is often associated with anxiety and OCD. Exactly how they correlate seems to be a foggy area that 'experts' don't seem to agree on 100%, but they agree the conditions do correlate. So I connected with a Psychologist and spoke with her about what behavior therapy is and how to use that to treat my tics. Knowing the anxiety that I have as well as some of the obsessive-compulsive tendencies I have exhibited in the past, our sessions have been her digging into my brain (figuratively of course. I do enough literal brain digging through my nose sitting at red lights) and asking open ended questions to literally figure out what makes me tic. Since I met my wife 4 1/2 years ago, when I try something new to minimize my tics I will ask her if she has noticed a difference, and the answer has always been no.

As I've been seeing the psychologist I've learned more about myself, and even more about Tourette's, and have been given all kinds of pointers to help combat the anxiety and the OCD. While I'm not cured (that wasn't my expectation anyway) I finally had my wife say that I seem to twitch less recently! After all the punches I've thrown and the eyes I've poked, hearing her say that I felt like this:

So while I still twitch, it was nice to feel some improvement, and even better to have someone else who sees me every day to acknowledge it as well. And I'm sure my kids appreciate how much better I've become at not blowing air into their faces!

I like to continually learn and try to improve, not just with TS but with everything. I strive every day to be a better husband, father, brother, firefighter, Christian and every other aspect of my life. Life is hard. My sister just told me this morning that being a parent is hard. (amen!) But it's all part of life. Better yourself so you can help better others.

And finally. My beautiful little girl turned 3 this last week. Happy Birthday Cutie!! She can't decide from one minute to the next if she is Doc McStuffins, Queen Elsa, Sleeping Beauty or one of the Bubble Guppies, but I love all of her! And I'm not ashamed to admit I can sing along with all the aforementioned songs. (I may even sing "Let It Go" better than Queen Elsa herself...)

It's Turkey Time!

Happy Thanksgiving to all who may be celebrating it this week! It's one of my favorite holidays; a chance to meet up with family, watch the beauty of the earth transforming to its winter colors, and hear relatives you don't see very often groan and shake their heads in disgust as they leave the bathroom they've just destroyed. Not to mention football. What a holiday!

Some years ago in church we were challenged to say an entire prayer of thanksgiving. Instead of asking for things, spend the entire prayer thinking about the blessings in your life and express gratitude for them and ask for nothing. As I took that challenge I realized that I have so much more to be thankful for than I really ever imagined. At the time I had a job that I did not like. But every week I met with people who didn't have jobs and were struggling to feed their children. I learned quickly that I truly was thankful for the job I despised. A lot of times the things we want can blur our mind to what we have. You may want something, and then you want another thing, and more and more, then before you realize it you have everything and think you have nothing. Every now and then I will take a minute to stop and think about what I truly have and even though it's not a million dollars in the bank and it's not the newest, nicest things, I really have very little reason to complain.

One of the odd things in my life that I am grateful for are challenges. Like all humans, I have suffered many challenges. My challenges are worse than some peoples, and at the same time mine don't even compare in magnitude to other peoples. I've always taken challenges as a learning opportunity. I've had some bosses that were difficult to work with but from them I learned what type of supervisor I don't want to be. When I've failed at an assignment or project, I have used it to make my next work better. Challenges give us the opportunity to learn about ourselves and how much better we can be. They're not always fun and can sometimes be a long term issue that we have to deal with, but they can really push us to our limits and show others what we are made of. For those reasons, I am thankful for the challenges I've faced in life.

I hope everybody had a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving! The Holiday season is upon us. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or none of the above, this is a great time of year to spend time with loved ones and enjoy food and festivities. The weather gets colder, the drinks get hotter and for some reason people will kiss each other under a parasitic plant and blame it on the eggnog when their wives find out. Happy Holidays indeed!

And finally: GO SEAHAWKS!

Update!

In the winter/spring of 2013, National Geographic followed my family and me around Little Rock for awhile, filming the everyday aspects of our lives and my going through the hiring process with the fire department. I had a blast with the cameras around and meeting with the various camera operators and sound techs and producers. I was hoping Life with Tourette’s would be a season-long show, but only one episode was aired and I didn’t hear anything else from it. (And I actually can’t find it ANYWHERE! I’ve had a few people ask to see it, and I have no idea if there’s record of it anywhere, so if any of you computer savvy internet geniuses know where to find it, let me know!!) So I thought since the show kind of left people hanging on what happened to me, I’d update y’all now.

Since the show I did in fact get hired on the FD. I worked hard and waited a long time to get the job, and I was ecstatic when I got the call from the chief of the Little Rock Fire Department offering me the job. I get to go to work now every day (well, actually it’s every 3rd day) at what I think is the greatest job in the world! One thing that didn’t make the airwaves was me walking into the fire department for the first time with a whole entourage of people with cameras, microphones and clipboards. The FD was nice enough to play along but I was quickly reminded how generally unhappy they were about the surprise visit. They lived though, and now I get to be one of those guys I used to look up to when a fire truck went racing by.

I’ve developed a number of new tics since the show. A person with Tourette’s has tics that change over time. Some tics get better, some get worse, and some new ones develop while old ones go away. In the show I was hitting myself in the back of the neck pretty hard and regularly. I don’t do that so much anymore, which is nice! That particular tic hurt!! But one tic I’ve had for a long time, touching the eyes of pictures and in mirrors (which is more of an OCD based tic than a neurological tic,) has gotten worse. I started to poke other people in the eye! I only did it for a couple days to my children before working really hard to change that tic. I definitely don’t want to hurt them! And…I don’t want to get punched in the face. At work one night we were loading our hose back onto the engine after a fire and I reached up and almost poked a co-worker in the eye. I stopped myself because if I did that, and he decked me, I wouldn’t have blamed him one bit! So that is the most recent ‘new tic’ that I am working on. I no longer poke my kids in the eyes, but I still run my hands over their face, which my almost-3-year-old has told me is “noying Daddy.”

Other than a new job and new tics, we’ve also added a new member to the family! When my daughter was born I didn’t think I could love anyone or anything as much as I love her. Then my son was born and I found out the amazing feelings of love and happiness that come from having two. I go to work every day and smile because I love my job, then I come home from work and have a bigger smile because I get to have these two waiting for me when I walk in. Addie turns 3 next month and Dallin just hit 6 months, and both are growing like weeds! They are without a doubt the greatest joy in my life.

I’ve also had the chance to meet new friends since I was on the show. (What’s up Tyler!) I have a lot of fun talking with others who have or know people with TS and just get to know them and hear their stories. The news and current events make you believe otherwise, but I think most people are awesome. Every person is different than the next and that is what makes the world interesting.

Life changes and I’ve learned to embrace it. Some changes are big, major changes that alter your whole life while others are so minor that other people don’t notice. But that’s all part of life. Roll with the punches, even if you’re throwing them at yourself!

Buck Tooth Beaver

First things first: Happy Veterans Day to all who are serving, those who have served, those who gave their lives for this country, and to the families that have supported them all through everything. I thank you for my freedom and for everything that you have provided me!

When I tell a joke, either to a big crowd or just a small group of people, I make fun of people only under one of two conditions: first, the person I make fun of is me, because I know I won’t hurt my own feelings; or second, I make sure the person I am making fun of is a friend of mine whom I know I will not offend with the joke. (Except my wife. She never knows when I make jokes about her, but “I do” came with an unwritten clause that jokes will be made on her behalf, and there’s nothing she can do about it. :) So I won’t make fun of a person right off the bat, and often times not even the first couple of times I meet them. I get to know people, what kind of sense of humor they have and how much they can take before I start cracking on them. (This formula has not always worked, and even though I thought I was in the clear, I have inadvertently hurt feelings before and it made me feel terrible when I realized it! That has never been my intention.)

(Other than the teeth...what a stud!)

The reason I choose to do this is because when my baby teeth fell out and my adult teeth grew in, Goofy was jealous! My two front teeth were MONSTERS! Look at those things, holy smokes! NASA could relay signals off those things. They’re still pretty big, but my face is finally fatter now than it was in 3rd grade. I got called Buck Tooth Beaver for 3rd and most of 4th grade. And it hurt. I think the last time I was called that, by someone other than my sisters, was 5th grade. 7th and 8th grade I got picked on more for getting better grades than my bullies (notice I said BETTER grades than them, and not GOOD grades. Because only in my head are “C”s good grades) and for my fashion sense. But that’s what happens when you chose to style yourself after Corey Matthews from Boy Meets World. Now, if I had tried to dress more like Shawn Hunter instead, maybe they wouldn’t have talked so much trash. He was cool. I was just curly hair away from calling myself Corey! But because I know how it feels when someone makes fun of you when you don’t want it, I try my hardest to make certain that the jokes I tell and the teasing I take part in is in pure fun. No malice or hurt feelings intended at all.

Unfortunately my method of teasing and joke telling isn’t the most common way it is done. A lot of people tease and pick on people for numerous reasons. From elementary school throughout adulthood, it happens. Even as an adult I have avoided walking through certain hallways or talking to certain people because I know there are people who don’t know when they’ve crossed the line, or perhaps they know and don’t care. Now I have pretty thick skin, and it takes a bit to truly offend me, but it still happens.

To kids being bullied may I offer a simple bit of advice? Confront your bully. I had one kid in 7th and 8th grade who picked on me constantly. I finally told him that I'd had enough and that he needed to knock it off. Much to my surprise, he apologized! He told me that he thought that it had all been in fun and that he didn’t know it was hurtful to me. We lived in the same neighborhood for about another year and he never did it again. We would wave in the hallways and he more or less ignored me after that. Kids have a funny way of thinking, and as a kid yourself you may not understand that yet, but trust me you do. I can’t guarantee it will work, but the first step I would suggest is to tell your bully to knock it off. (Then if that doesn’t work, punch him in the junk and run as fast as you can!)

On a serious note, if you are being bullied, picked on or teased more than you want, there are multiple ways to stop it without violence. There are many avenues to get help, please look into them and talk with someone before it comes to hurting yourself or someone else.

Think about your friends and your relationships with them. A lot of bullies don’t realize what they’re doing can hurt someone else, so think about what you do and make sure you yourself are not a bully. I’ve been made fun of for wearing glasses, having big teeth, and for twitching (at a Mariners game a couple years ago some punk teenager asked me if I was retarded after a twitching fit) and I have seen people made fun of for a whole array of other reasons. It can hurt. It can deeply affect people. Look out for your friends and stand up for them when they need it. Watch what you say and do, and accept people for their differences.

Understanding

My first experience with Tourette's came long before I even began exhibiting tics. A buddy of mine and I went up to Washington DC (this was the first time I lived in VA, for those keeping track) to see a game downtown. I don't remember if it was hockey or basketball, but it was a DC pro sports team in 2002, which means they probably lost. But we were on the metro after the game heading home and my buddy and I were sitting in the metro seats closest to the door. We offered our seats to others but nobody accepted, so we sat in the crowded car. There was a boy about 10 years old with his mother standing closest to us. He was holding the pole in the middle of the car for support and just staring out the window with a blank stare. After a few minutes of this, out of the blue clear sky, this kid yells like he just saw a ghost! My buddy literally jumped into his seat, over the back of it and ran to the far end of the car, scared out of his mind. My heart was racing as I sat there terrified, wondering was was behind me out the window that scared him and was it going to kill me. The boy quickly calmed down and returned to his blank stare while I, and most of the rest of the train, wondered 'what the hell was that?!' His mother leaned in to me and said, "I'm sorry about that. He has tourette's syndrome." I replied, "oh, ok. No problem." Once I understood that there wasn't a ghost sitting next to me, I was fine. My buddy finally returned to his seat once his heart rate dropped below 200 beats a minute.

Understanding is something that I have found a lot of people have, but it's often times hidden under many other emotions that come out first. I have found in my experience that a lot of people see that I have some kind of tic and immediately assume that I can't do things. Even the U.S. military has a rule when you try to join that any kind of tics disqualify you from military service. It took me going to 3 recruiters before I found one willing to overlook my tics, but look what they got out of it!

A tall guy in a goofy hat without a smile. But they also got the goal oriented, hard worker that I am.

It's almost a natural reaction to let our reservations appear before understanding. Some people see a person with a disability, either physical or mental, and immediately think that the person is incapable of doing things on their own. While this may be true, there is also a good chance that the person has learned to adapt whatever it is that makes them 'different' and can quite possibly surprise you with what they can accomplish. One of my favorite baseball pitchers when I was a kid was Jim Abbott. He was an amazing college and professional athlete who was born with only one hand. I looked up to him for being one of the best at what he did professionally and for overcoming something that many people can't imagine being faced with.

Needless to say, understanding goes far beyond employing and befriending people with TS. There are good people out there in every walk of life. From the age old prejudice of skin color and ethnicity, to physical and mental impairments to level of wealth, having people who have and exhibit understanding is what makes people want to be better. After fighting so hard to join the Air Force, once I enlisted I worked hard to ensure they had no reason to doubt their letting me join. (This included hiding tics the best I could for long periods of time.) When I accepted the job as a firefighter, not one person in the hiring process or rookie school minded that I had it. (They had issues with me bringing a camera crew with television producers and sound guys unexpectedly, but who wouldn't?!) But I still had the drive to be the best I could in rookie school and now every day as a firefighter. People around the world who aren't afraid of someone who is 'different,' who don't immediately jump to conclusions about others and give people who are 'different' a fair chance, they are often times the people who find golden nuggets of friends and employees that others have passed over.

First of all, congratulations to the San Francisco Giants!! World series champs!! As a ten year old we lived in the SF Bay area and I was able to root for them, even went to Candlestick Park a few times to watch Barry Bonds and Matt Williams. While I will always be first and foremost a Seattle Mariners fan, I've always liked the Giants. Way to go!!

How has my life changed since I began twitching? For one thing, I can't sit still anymore! I consider myself very fortunate to have finished high school before my tics began. I get made fun of for it enough as an adult and I can't imagine how hard that would have been during elementary and middle school. I very much look up to children who go to school everyday with tics and twitches and are able to persevere. And I have to give a shout out to their friends who do not have any tics of their own and see past them and stand up for their friends when needed. My friends joke around with me and give me a hard time about my tics, but I know they would (and have experienced them) stand up for me when another person takes the joking too far. If you have a good, close friend who has tics, let me tell you that even though they may not say it, your friendship means a lot. Probably more than you realize. To the buddies I have and have had, thank you very much!

My tics are predominantly in my neck, shoulders and upper torso, though I have had them all over my body. Tics change and evolve over time. No two people with tics twitch alike. We're all unique. Mine involve a lot of head movement and jerking of my shoulders and neck. When my wife or children lay their heads on my shoulder it triggers a tic in my shoulder blade which ends up bouncing their heads around like popcorn in the kettle! I feel bad about that but they're used to it. I also have many tics based on obsessive compulsive disorder. I walk around waving all of the time, not only because I'm friendly :), but because shadows, pictures and mirrors cause me to twitch! I can't tell you how many people I've met and friends I've made (and people I've freaked out) by randomly waving as I walk around. While they think I'm simply waving, I'm actually twitching. It's not a normal wave either. It's sort of a mix of "Hello" with "be gone" and a little "wave like a royal cross dresser." I think the type of wave is what freaks people out. They're thinking, 'is he saying hello? is he shooing me away like a fly? Is he flirting with my husband?' Regardless of what people think, I am friendly and usually try to pass it off as a friendly gesture of greeting.

Some of my tics are embarrassing! When I am trying to subdue my tics, they move toward my trunk. No, I'm not a freaking elephant, the trunk is the torso. (not that I would turn down the opportunity to have an elephant trunk...) So while you can't see it unless you know what to look for, I am still twitching. Now, what happens when you quickly contract your stomach muscles? Everything gets compressed. So now lets imagine you just at Mexican food, my wife's favorite. You're full of a delicious chimichanga, beans with cheese, rice and chips with cheese dip. Now you get all that inside your gut and compress it rapidly and repeatedly. The BEST case scenario is that it pushes food UP and I get heartburn. The worst case (and the funniest/embarrassing case) is the gasses get pushed DOWN aaaaand....I can clear out a large room rather quickly. Sometimes, after a good large meal, I sound like an elephant, and smell like the monkey cage at the zoo. Now a mature person would pass gas like that and move on with life, but, given the scenario, I'm not a mature person. I like to blame other people first -and sometimes the dog- or pretend I didn't hear anything, before finally claiming it. If it's a good enough one, I may have to claim it straight up with my chest puffed out and head held high. (this is not the mature side of me my wife married.) But it can be embarrassing so I joke about it. Cracking one off on a first date like that is hard to overcome, but I've done it!

My tics truly are very mild. I have met a number of people with TS whose tics are much more violent and serious than mine. I recently met two men who can't drive because their tics are so bad. While my joking personality helps me cope, I realize every day that my tics really are nothing compared to some people who have them. I don't try to 'play up' my tics or situation any worse than they are. I am who I am, and I hope that me being me can help people understand and continue to persevere.

First Post!

Hello! Thank you for visiting. My name is Zach Stookey. I am a 28 year old firefighter living in central Arkansas. Eight years ago I began having tics that began minor and quickly escalated to violent. It took six months of doctors appointments, seeing everyone from neurologists to hippie doctors (I call her that because her first ‘cure’ was hypnosis and her second option was marijuana. I couldn’t see her feet under her long skirt, but I imagine she had sandals on her feet, unshaven legs and probably wasn’t wearing any underwear…) before I was finally diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome. I quickly learned a whole new type of life I had not been accustomed to, but I use laughter and comedy to get by every day. Hardly a day goes by that somebody doesn’t ask about or comment on my TS and I really enjoy educating other about it, and sometimes I get a good laugh and their expense.