- Have you ever been bullied? - I was bullied a lot
when I was in school, they would not wanna play with me, they would call me the R word. - But I'll be your friend. - You will be my friend? - Mmhmm. (light and uplifting music) - Hello.
- Hi, what's your name? - My name's Anna. - I'm Janelle.
- Oh. - How are you?
- Good. - Hi Micah.
- Hi. - I love your outfit, you are
dressed really snazzy today. - Thank you, but. - What are we gonna talk about? - We are here to talk
about Tourette syndrome. - What is that? - Tourette syndrome is
a neurological disorder, that causes people to have
tics and body movements, that they can't control,
like see what I just did right there, that's part of it. - Oh.
- Mmhmm. - Oh.
- Like you see what I'm doing right now? - Yeah.
- Yeah, does it make you nervous? - No.
- Oh okay good. So that means that I have
something in my brain, that makes me have tics
that I can't control. So I can't do anything about it, it just happens, all
the time, all day long. - Usually when that happens
to me I take deep breaths. - You do, let me try. Nope, they're still there. I have, like sometimes a neck jerk, there's like lots of
different tics that I have. - Like you're doing right now. - Yeah, like I'm doing it right now, but I don't blurt out any words. Yeah, did you see somebody with that kind? - Yeah.
- Yeah, and it's really rare that people do that. - Yeah. - That would be pretty sad,
and you couldn't control it, if you just yelled something out people could hear what
you were talking about. - Or what you're thinking, 'cause it just comes out
of your mouth sometimes. - That's terrible. - And when you like walk across a road, do people look at you? - People stare at me
all the time, every day. They always are kind of
wondering, what's wrong with her? - Right, why is she moving? - Why is she moving like that, exactly. - What about when you're driving? - I have tics when I'm driving, but fortunately I just
have really good reflexes, but I do have tics, but I drive, and it's funny when my
friends are in the car, 'cause they laugh because I can
be a little jerky in the car but people who are not
in my car don't know. (laughing) - What do you think about the tics? - What do I think about the tics? - Yeah. - I think they get on my nerves. It's painful, and it's constant. It feels like when you're gonna sneeze, and then you have to hold your sneeze in. It kind of is like this, you have these movements
that you can't stop. - Usually it comes out of my mouth. - Yours comes out of your mouth. - But sometimes I hold it. - Well sometimes my tics
come out of my mouth, too, but not the way that most
people think but like, if I'm drinking water and I have a tic, sometimes I'll just spit the water out. - How did you get it? - I was born with it but it
didn't show up until I was five. So my mom thought I just had habits, and I was just like doing
things to get attention and so I would get in trouble a lot, 'cause she would say, stop doing that. Do you ever do stuff where
your mom's like, Desmond, stop doing that, now imagine
hearing that all the time. So that's what my mom would say, because she didn't know
any better, nobody knew. - Did you ever like, get super mad and sent you to the principal? - Yes, they would kick me out of class, they would kick me out of school-- - Like kick? - Not physically kick,
but like make me leave. Because the teacher
mistreated me like that, it gave the kids permission to do it, and so the kids kinda followed suit and they were like kinda mean to me, and didn't wanna play with
me, so it was kinda hard. - But I'll be your friend. - You will be my friend?
- Mmhmm. - I like that. - 'Cause I get the tics a lot. - Yeah.
- Trust me, with my brother. - You mean like ticked off? - Mmhmm.
- Yeah, so there's ticked off,
which is when you're mad. This kind of a tic is
more like in my muscles from coming from my brain. It hurts when they happen, but it's hard when I
try to hold them back, and sometimes like today,
I am holding them back a little bit, so when I go home later, they're gonna be really really bad, they're gonna be even worse, because I'm trying to
force them not to show up, which is really hard on my
body, like I'm getting hot. Even my eyes have tics, but because I have Tourette's,
my brain makes up for it by giving me a photographic memory. - So that's good that you
have that, that's the good, always think on the bright side of having Tourette's symptoms,
you can remember anything. - I can remember so much stuff. - Is there any medicine or
treatments that you have to take? - Well there are medicines,
and they don't work for everybody, and I'm
unfortunately one of the people that have tried a lot of medications, and I've had a lot of really
bad side effects from them, that actually feel worse
than the Tourette's, and like one medicine made me
gain a whole bunch of weight, another medicine made me forget my memory, I couldn't remember how to get home, I couldn't remember how to read. - So you're still not doing it right now. - No I'm not taking
any medicine right now, but maybe they'll come up with one-- - Yeah. - That works good, I mean there's always hope. - Will the tics ever stop? - I don't think so. - Are you okay with that? - I don't have a choice
but to be okay with it, because if I can't change it,
I have to live with it, yeah. - I feel very sorry for you. - Oh, well you don't have
to feel sorry for me. I think, you know what's
good, is feeling empathy. - Empathy? - That means having an
understanding, that's a good word, we should all have
empathy for one another. - It was nice to meet you. - It was nice to meet you too sweetheart. - Thank you Janelle. - Thank you for sharing your story about having Tourette's.
- You're very welcome. Thank you so much. Hi, I'm Janelle, thank you for watching kids meet a woman with Tourette's. If you wanna learn more
about Tourette syndrome, click the link below, don't
forget to subscribe to HiHo, and watch more kids meet videos, bye. (light and uplifting music)
