Pocket Books 2006
211 pages

Product Description
Amy Wilensky was eight years old when she started to suffer from Tourette's Syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The apple of her father's eye and a pretty, high achieving young girl, she watched as her body began to do things she couldn't control, her mind lurch and veer in ways she didn't understand. Ostensibly illogical, Amy's fears and compulsions ranged from an irrational dread of odd numbers, to a love of multiples of six; from denying herself water, to an impulse to stockpile rotting food; from needing to touch wood to ward off harm, to balancing on the edge of the subway platform. This involuntary dimension to her life was bewildering and potentially crippling. Now a young woman and a powerful witness to her own dysfunction, Wilensky looks back on the emotional fall-out of this socially disabling condition. By turns tragic and comic, her gripping narrative extends our understanding of the complex human mind and, with subtlety, humour and an eye for the absurd, challenges our notion of what it is to be 'normal'.

going to Kirjakko today

Thanks Hippolein! It's always interesting to read what sort of twists and turns the mind can do. Might bookcrossing be a form of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)?

Finally I'm getting around reading this. Will comment along as my Alzheimer's is lifting its ugly head.
Somebody has underlined words and written translations almost on all pages in the beginning, which is a bit annoying and something we were strictly told was a no-no when we were kids. Luckily that somebody finished reading at page 100.
I had heard mentioning of Tourette's in American films, usually connected with someone talking obscenities, but had not read anything about it. According to this book it is spread equally worldwide, is more common in men and every 40th person should have it, so everybody is likely to know somebody with Tourette's. I don't quite buy this. The symptoms she is describing are rather easily spotted in people and so distinctive that you are likely to pay attention to them, but I am quite sure I've never met anyone with Tourette's, let alone know somebody with it personally. Sounds a crap of a life, to be honest.

Still reading:
There more I read the more I have a feeling that Tourette's is related to autism and asperger's - the holding on to old and familiar things, hoarding, counting, dislike of touch by others. But the tics and tacs and really weird OCD traits - one more thing to be thankful for not having.
Amy once got drunk as a youngster and although she didn't tic at all that evening, she was extremely surprised that she had managed to walk a quarter of a mile without stepping on manholes on the street, touching fenceposts and lo and behold, counting her steps. She always always always wanted to stop on an even number, preferably a multiple of six. She always counted her steps, regardless of company or circumstance. A very good reason not to drink alcohol again!!
Museums better have guards in all rooms as people with Tourette's have a compulsion to touch things which have a sign saying "Do NOT touch". Wet paint is something Amy can't resist either. Nor hot stoves, although she knows she'll get hurt.
The trip she made with her family, when she made her dad stop the car saying she was going to be sick and then just run to hug a tree - and then wanted to touch all the trees in that area and run like a headless chicken from tree to tree until she was dragged back to the car, I might have left her there were I that parent. Luckily I do not have kids.
Actually kids and family members - parents including - were some of the people who hurt Amy the most. Children can be really cruel toward somebody different, but howcome a parent does not see that his child does not tic for fun?? Amy was not beaten at home for ticing, like some Tourette's patients told at a meet-up they had been, but Amy's father really showed her how repulsive he thought she looked, told her countless times to stop and mimicked her tics. This was particularly hurtful as she had always been a daddy's girl.
Funnily enough, Amy told about an episode of Law and Order, where a man sued his employer for sacking him when all he had was Tourette's and could not help shouting obscenities and ticing. I remember seeing the same episode - but when Amy and her family saw it, they thought it was not a real medical condition, CAN'T be!!

Finished!
I'm not one who thinks that people should eat happiness pills lightly, but if I had had tics and compulsive behaviour like this girl I would have been glad to try anything! Thus it seemed odd that after having her diagnosis from the first shrink she never saw her again and only having found somebody else with Tourette's she went to another shrink and was very reluctant to try out Prozac prescribed for her for her OCD.
I have a friend who has MS and she says it's so easy to live with a man who also has MS as you do not have to explain things like fatique. I guess finding another Tourette case and the ease and understanding they immediately had must be similar to that.
Was the Jack Nicholson movie called As Good As It Gets where he played a character with OCD? I thought it was a bit overdone with his silly compulsive whims as surely nobody does THAT, but apparently I was wrong. I've never given much thought of how the compulsive behaviour feels to the one doing it, but I would have imagined that the person thinks he does it for a good reason, but reading Amy I realized that often times she herself knew that what she was doing wasn't making any sense but could not help herself. And that many of her traits sprung out of supersticion - like if she stepped on manhole covers on the street she would not get mugged or if she didn't remove her shoes and kept chewing the same gum the plane she was going to take would not crash.
This book made a very interesting read and as I said before, I now know one more thing to be thankful for not having.

Amy gets to come to the meet-up.

I picked up this book ..

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