Today didn’t go according to plan.

Thankfully, sixty-three years ago Sir William Beveridge’s plan for a national health service became a reality, and it was his NHS that came to my rescue today.

On my way to work, accompanied by Leftwing Idiot, I hurt my leg badly when it suddenly ticced at the bottom of the stairs.…

At the start of the year I went to see my dentist to have my teeth cleaned and scaled. He decided to refer me to the local dental hospital because my tics were making it pretty tricky for him to do very much.…

On Friday I had my second appointment for Habit Reversal Therapy. During the session the therapist said he thought the muscle groups involved in my tics have got stuck with only two settings: relaxed (not in use at all), or maximum tension and ticcing.…

Yesterday’s dilemma is resolved. I was unsure whether to carry on taking the medication for my tics because it’d been making me feel lousy. I didn’t take it last night and today I’m feeling much better. So my decision was clearly the right one.…

A couple of days ago I started a course of medication for Tourettes, but now I’m faced with the tricky decision about whether to go on with it. It’s a drug I’d been on a couple of years ago but I gave it up when it stopped working.…

Last week I had Botox injections in the back of my neck with the aim of weakening the muscles there and preventing my head tics causing permanent damage. But my neck’s more painful now than it was before.

It gets worse when I’m holding my head at a particular angle, like when I was wrapping Christmas presents with King Russell this evening.…

This afternoon I had a hospital appointment to see if Botox injections might help prevent my neck tics causing lasting damage. The doctor said they could help for simple tics like jerking my head back or blinking, but they wouldn’t be useful for tics that involved multiple muscle groups.…

The report from my Habit Reversal Therapy (HRT) assessment has arrived and I read it with interest. It gave an accurate overview of me and my tics. I was relieved to read that my mood was normal, and that I wasn’t found to be depressed or anxious.…

Last night I tried taking the drug. Melatonin is a natural compound that my doctor’s prescribed to help me sleep. It normally takes me a couple of hours to settle and get to sleep but it was much quicker last night.…

I’m just about to head off to bed. Recently my tics have been interfering with my sleep in a massive way. Getting to sleep has always been a problem but my tics haven’t been repeatedly waking me up throughout the night in the way they are at the moment.…