Hands and Feet

Well here's an interesting one. For me, anyway.

Tonight, I was getting The Boy ready for bed. As I knelt in his room waiting to put on his PJs, he told me, "All day today, my hands and feet felt like they just had to touch different things." Hmmm. Like what? Can you show me? "Well like this..." The Boy proceeded to curl his toes and then touched the tips (almost the tops) of his toes to the ground. Then likewise with the other foot. Hmmm, says I. Then he walked around his room about 3 times just dragging the tops of his feet like that. Well, what about your hands? Do they feel like touching something? "Not right now. But earlier, my palms had a different thing." Then he touched one palm to the ladder of his bed and then the other. Hmmm (I'm very eloquent in these moments). Then he rubbed his palms together for a bit, rubbed them against each hip and that seemed to be it.

I told The Boy that those actions seemed to be a very normal kind of tic for TS. I hoped to encourage him with that statement but in stead he said, "Oh! This will NEVER go away!!!" I felt so bad because it truly upset him. And in my head I'm thinking how much worse it could be and how thankful I am that the tic is so mellow. So I told him, well, did this happen at school? "Not really," which usually means he felt like it but controlled it. So I told him, hey, it seems like you'll be able to control this. And I reminded him that the TS went away for my brother (who had TS really really horribly from about the age of 5 to about 13). And by "went away" I mean that he was able to control it and has functioned as a contributing member of society, complete with jobs (good ones, too), marriage, kids, etc.

To me, this seems to be the first...I guess I'd call it "physical" tic I've seen from him. Most of them are noises. Clicks, grunts, little noises. Oh, I guess the Spidey Hands would be the first physical one.

The interesting thing about this one is, this time the fear didn't overwhelm me like in the past. Last year, any new tic reminded me that this thing could just blow the roof off of The Boy's life at any moment. I felt like we have a smoking volcano. But lately, God's been showing me that he's got my back. And the collective back of my family. So I felt the fear try to raise it's head and I just thought to myself, "Nope. God's got it. He's got The Boy. He's gonna get The Boy through it."

I did email his teacher about it. She always offers to watch for things if we need her to (have I told you that she totally rocks?). Also, I know that touching other people is a very common tic for TS people. I just wanted her to know in case he reaches over and presses a palm against a classmate - that she knows this is happening. Most likely, he'll totally have it under control at school. But I want his teacher on his side - just in case.