mojatu.com | Nottingham connected
Woman With Tourette’s Says ‘Biscuit’ 16,000 Times a Day
Jessica Thom, a sassy and smart 32-year-old from
London, says the word “biscuit” 16,000 times a day. She also
involuntarily bangs her head against the wall, beats her chest
and when least expected, lets out a guttural sound or swears.
She describes her love-hate relationship with the disabling
disorder Tourette syndrome in a new diary-style memoir --
“Welcome to Biscuit Land: A Year in the Life of Touretteshero,”
available in October.
In Britain, “biscuit” means “cookie,” but Thom insists she
is never really thinking about eating when she has her
involuntary outbursts. Her brother-in-law recently took note
of her verbal tic and counted her saying it 16 times a minute,
or about 900 times an hour.
In one day alone, she has hit herself on the forehead with a
phone, a carton of apple juice, a set of keys, a toilet roll and a
strawberry.
Thom said that for years she viewed Tourette’s as a liability,
but now she sees it as a strength. Comparing herself to the
film character Bridget Jones, who laughed at her quirks and
foibles, Thom recounts hilarious, but also heartbreaking
stories of her encounters with a world not used to her social
outbursts.
“I know I tic all the time and it sort of pisses me off -- biscuit,
biscuit,” Thom told ABCNews.com. “But if I paid attention to
it all the time, I wouldn’t get much done. Sometimes with
the Tourette’s, I get overloaded -- biscuit, biscuit. I’ll punch
myself in the chest hundreds of times a day and my legs move
erratically about.”
For full story visit yahoo.com on http://goo.gl/T6X70
The 17 Best Photos From The London Olympics
We’ve seen some amazing images come out of the
London over the last two weeks. The Olympics are filled with
photogenic sports (diving, etc.) and immense passion (four
years of pent-up emotion), which makes for highly evocative
photos. We’ve looked through the archives of the AP and
Getty, and pulled out the 17 most stunning photos from the
2012 Games.
They were taken inside, outside, underwater, and from
inside the Olympic Flame. And they’re a great way to close out
London 2012. For full story visit businessinsider.com on goo.gl/
Iv0jO
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