Thursday, August 02, 2012

3586 Strange brains

August 2, 2012

When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children,
endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority,
for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
-- Bertrand Russell --

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The following is a 10-minute video about a guy with Tourette's, Luke, who just wants a girlfriend.  Unfortunately, he's one of the 10% who has the problem with uncontrollable swearing.

[http://youtu.be/qZRgmFvYPrA]

The brain is a mysterious thing.   The Tourette's part of Luke's brain knows exactly which words are forbidden and will get the worst reaction and that's what it generates.  So I can't help wondering - if Luke had been raised in a society of anorexic, diabetic, truck drivers, would he be shouting "Cheesecake!", and "Sugar!" instead of "F--k you!" and "Bitch!"?

It reminds me a bit of Jay, when his brain decided to throw away the left side of the world, to the point where he was blind to the first half of double words.

I knew a guy with Tourette's once.  He didn't have the swearing thing, though.  He just twitched a lot and yipped and barked.  He and his wife were in Mensa.  We all liked him.  He was sweet.  We all strongly disliked his wife.  They'd got married just before they moved to the Poughkeepsie area and became active in the local group.  She was more than a bit of a slut, wandering off all the time with guys, and she'd yell at him, "You're barking again!  Stop it!" like she had no understanding of the syndrome or didn't care about how difficult it was for him to control it.  She eventually wandered off, within the first year, I think.  After she left, since he couldn't drive because of the twitching, one of us would pick him up for the dinners and games nights.

One evening I gave him a ride home after a dinner, and he started talking.  I'd never heard anything like it.  Words poured out of him.  What he was saying made sense in and of itself, but it just poured out so fast and had nothing to do with anything and segued into different topics at warp speed.  In spates between the deluge, he said that when he starts talking uncontrollably it means a seizure is coming on and if it did while he was in the car I shouldn't panic but just let it go, wait it out, and he's sorry if it scares me.  I responded that my late husband had seizures, and they don't bother me a bit.  When we arrived outside his apartment, I offered to sit with him until whatever happened had passed, but he said no, he was used to it and would be ok.

I never saw him again.  I often wondered what happened to him.
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3 comments:

Becs said...

I regularly see a woman about my age at the library. She has Tourette's (I'm assuming) and hers takes the form of a kind of grunting noise.

I'd seen her before and hadn't understood what was going on, just thought she was annoying and/or crazy. (We have a few of those at the library.) We were both at the check-out desk and started chatting. Perfectly reasonable, nice woman who was concerned about getting her kids some good books.

What a wretched thing to have to deal with.

rockygrace said...

(I can't watch the video right now - the boss is in) Is Tourette's physical or psychological? Or both? That must suck. Especially in church.

and ~~Silk, I just wanted to thank you for standing up for me on the Dooce post. I cannot BELIEVE that people are still getting worked up about that. Thanks for coming to my defense.

~~Silk said...

Physical V. psychological? Physical, in the same way that seizures are physical. But when you are dealing with the brain, where's the line between physical and psychological? The physical aspect, some kind of problem in the physical brain, causes the outbursts. A psychological component may determine what form the short circuit takes. Also, Tourettes sufferers tend to have more tics and vocalizations when they are upset or nervous, so there's an emotional component - but emotions are also completely in the brain. When you're talking about the brain, physical, psychological, and emotional cannot be separated.

I figure that just about any mental health issue that can't be cured by simple talk therapy has a physical basis, a mis-wiring or chemical glitch in the physical brain.

As Jay used to joke about his physical disabilities (due to the brain tumor) - "I'm not really blind or paralyzed. It's all in my head." And actually, he was right.