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	Busy Body: My Life with Tourette's Syndrome By: Bloss, Nick van Published By: Vision Paperbacks ePub for Digital Editions Price: $14.99 PDF for Digital Editions Price: $14.99 Mobipocket Reader Price: $14.99 Microsoft Reader Price: $14.99 Available to read online in eb20 (what's this?) PDF for Digital EditionsePub for Digital EditionsMobipocket ReaderMicrosoft Reader	EBOOK OPTIONS ADD TO CART ADD TO WISHLIST TELL A FRIEND RECEIVE ALERTS
	Nick Van Bloss was 7 years old when he had his first tic: a sudden compulsion to shake his head from left to right, twice in rapid succession. It wasn't until 15 years later that he was diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome. This book allows us into the heart and mind of a wonderfully witty and talented man.

Excerpt

The gate clicked shut behind me and I started counting. My pace was steady, and anyone who might have been watchingme on that particular Wednesday morning would have seen just another teenager on his way to school, weaving through the bustling North London streets, neither hurrying nor dawdling. I had made the same journey hundreds of times and knew that it took between 2,200 and 2,283 steps, no more and no less – although, since my route never varied, I had never quite worked out why there was such a difference between the two figures. The day had started out like all others. I’d woken to my clock radio blaring out some breakfast programme at 7.45 am and reluctantly heaved myself out of bed. A quick ‘Hello’ to my mother, as I went down four staircases and forty-four stairs, and I was in the kitchen boiling a kettle for some tea and ignoring, as always, the packet of cereal that had been put out for me the previous night. My stomach was already starting to twinge with nerves; there was just no way I was going to attempt to force food down my throat. As I stood in the kitchen I smashed my upper teeth hard against my lower, time and time again with a precise motor rhythm, and when that pattern seemed to be nicely established I was made to add a hard and violent nodding of my head to the mix, which seamlessly joined and became one with the jaw smashing. Tea in hand, I went back upstairs to take a quick shower, during which I inevitably caught sight of myself in the mirror and my heart sank as I realised that there had been no miraculous overnight improvement in my looks and that I was still pretty gross. Peering into the mirror, I saw my eyes twitching and watched with mild fascination as the twitch evolved, as usual, into a hard blinking, which made me screw my eyes up as tightly as possible. I saw some head nodding and watched my face contort painfully as I smashed my jaws together. I shook my head violently from side to side and then saw just how ridiculous I looked when I nodded at myself. I heard a little voice in my head say, ‘You ugly freak!’ and my near continuous nodding almost turned into a demented affirmation as I said back to myself, ‘Yes, you really are.’ As I dressed, and nodded and shook my head and blinked and smashed my teeth together, I was aware of an almost imperceptible crescendo in the noises that had begun so softly. At a rate of once every seven seconds or so, I made a short and intense sort of high-pitched ‘ooh’ sound, which by the time I was half dressed had turned into a ‘pah’. I mentally logged that my shirt had seven buttons as I fastened them and, just before I threw on a sweater, I was forced to punch myself hard in the stomach five times. My shoes were always a nightmare. Sitting on my bed, I tied and untied my laces ten times in succession and, when something in my brain told me that they were in fact well and truly tied, I had to feel my way around the shape of the tip of each shoe, with my fingers all bunched up together and applying equal force as they journeyed around the leather. I gave my hair a bit of a ruffle, took another quick look in the mirror, nodded and blinked a few times back at myself and I was ready.

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