It’s felt like I’ve been on a roll – Saturday was another ‘piggy day’ – a day without a ‘ticcing fit’ – and yesterday I still hadn’t had one all morning. But then, shortly after midday, my muscles tightened, I curled forward unable to move, and my body locked solid in a twisted ball.

My thoughts however were moving fast:

‘Uh-oh.’
‘This isn’t good.’
‘Can I breathe? Just about.’
‘Can I make a noise? No.’
‘I’m going to be here for a while.’
‘Will I shrivel up like a prune?’

The other thing moving fast was the water. I’d been having a shower at the time and it was still on. The water was battering the side of my face so hard I couldn’t breathe through my nose at all. The noise was relentless, deadened only by the water pooling in my ear.

Fat Sister was no more than twenty metres away but I knew it’d be a while before she realised I might be in difficulty or before she heard the tiny noise I was able to make. The only other thing I thought she might hear was my head (the only part of my body not locked tight) repeatedly hitting against the tiles.

I wasn’t scared, but it was incredibly unpleasant and there was nothing I could do except wait it out. My emergency buzzer was on the side of the bath but from my rigid ball-like position I didn’t have a hope of reaching it.

After about eight minutes (although it felt more like twenty) Fat Sister heard my tiny yelps, and to my relief I heard her heading towards the bathroom, calling out to see if I was OK.

She came into the room and then in a puzzled tone said ‘Where are you?’

My bathroom isn’t huge and she’d been expecting to find me on the floor, not balled up at one end of the bath, hidden from view by the shower curtain.

She quickly turned off the shower, flipped me on to my back and covered me with a towel. Next she dried my face, which felt great. After another three minutes or so my hearing returned to normal as my ears unblocked. It was a massive relief.

Eventually my body started to move. To start with it wasn’t a very useful sort of movement since my muscles were contracting and releasing over and over again. My back repeatedly pushed itself hard against the bath where it stuck like a suction cup, only to be wrenched away painfully with a pop a few moments later. Eventually this stopped too, and not long after the fit ended.

Fat Sister helped me out of the bath and waited outside while I got dressed. I was still in shock as I made my way out of the bathroom and it took twenty minutes or so to feel calmer about my bathroom ordeal.

Fat Sister and I discussed ways to make my buzzer waterproof so I could wear it on my wrist when I’m showering, like I do at night. Leftwing Idiot’s going to look into waterproof alarms and in the meantime whoever’s with me will wait nearby while I shower and I’ll leave the door open too.

Yesterday’s experience might’ve been a shock, but at least my right ear’s very clean.