When I woke up yesterday morning my tics, as usual, woke up too. But unusually I couldn’t hear them – I’d pretty much completely lost my voice.

“Biscuits” and “Hedgehogs” came out as strangled squeaks and completing a sentence was almost impossible. This wasn’t a total surprise though because of the horrible sore throat I’ve had for the last few days.

Poppy seemed torn between laughing at my strange voice and feeling sorry for me because it sounded so painful. It stayed the same all day and I gradually became used to the surreal experience of tics coming out with no sound.

It’s made keeping me safe more challenging than usual. Normally my incessant tics indicate I’m ok, and when they stop it usually means I’m in trouble. But Poppy could no longer rely on this, and even when she called out to see if I was alright, I couldn’t make a big enough noise for her to hear me.

I’ve never really appreciated until now what a useful inbuilt safety feature my vocal tics can be.