It took me years to outgrow my tics — and even longer to recover emotionally

As Told to Mindel Kassorla

IT

all began one morning as I was getting ready for preschool. I made a small sniffing noise. Then I did it again. And again. And I wasn’t sick.

“Noa, stop that,” my mom said.

“Stop what?”

At first, I didn’t even realize I was making a sniffing sound. Even when I started noticing my incessant “sniff,” “sniff,” I couldn’t stop myself.

That was scary enough. Then my mother told me that if the sniffing didn’t go away, we’d have to go to the doctor. To me, that was a terrifying threat. But still, I couldn’t control it. A few days later, mom said we were “going for ice cream” — code for “going to the doctor.”

A Progression of Tics

Sniffing, I soon learned, was just the first form of my many tics. Over the years, my tics morphed into twitching, blinking, and head shaking. Whenever a new tic appeared, I was forced to swallow a horrific medication called Azithromycin, an antibiotic commonly used to treat strep throat, among other conditions. I tried all sorts of tricks to get it down but sometimes it took me over an hour just to finish the nasty pink stuff.

Initially, I only had to take the meds as long as a tic persisted. But since they kept coming back, I went on medication regularly. It got to the point where I dreaded waking up in the morning because I knew I’d have to drink that pink medicine. And I hated when anyone asked about it. There’s only a certain number of times I could answer, “It’s for strep.” Who has strep for years in a row?!

When I initially asked my mom what was wrong with me, she told me that I have “habits” that will temporarily go away with medication. But I felt like I’d lost control of my body. It was so frightening.

I wish someone would have said to me, “Hey, Noa, I know you’re feeling confused right now. You have something called PANDAS, a condition associated with strep bacteria, which makes you do these funny things called tics. I know it’s scary and you probably feel weird, but you’re okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

With time, I got better at hiding or controlling my tics, to an extent. But in fifth grade, I developed a head shaking tic, which was harder to keep under wraps.

One day in math class, I was doodling when I saw two girls in the corner of my eye who appeared to be laughing at something. I turned toward them and I’ll never forget the look on their faces. One girl shook her head in a silly way while the other giggled. It took me a second to realize they were pretending to be me.

My face turned beet red and I started to sweat. I then sobbed silently, face down on my math book. I cried through the rest of the class. Am I crazy? Why am I like this?