Sleepless nights.....

So. As many of you know, J.J. has tourette syndrome. For those of you who think that Tourettes is about spitting foul language, your image is wrong. There are very few people who actually have that symptom.
J.J.'s symptom's include coughing to clear his throat. (That's his vocal tic.) And his physical tics change. At first it was blinking his eyes. Next it was.....twitching? Twitching. That's what I like to call it. He would suddenly move his head to the side and back up. Then he started showing facial expressions. Best way to describe the expressions is...when you grit your teeth, pushing your bottom jaw forward and strain your neck muscles. You notice how the muscles in your neck kind of stick out?
At first, these symptom's are so little that you might think he's having allergy issues. Or maybe he's twitching his head that way because of an ear infection. So I made an appointment and took him to the doctor. And that's when I learned that he might have tourettes. And I started crying. Why?? I didn't know a thing about it. All I knew was watching talk shows with people that would come on stage and start yelling obscenities and barking at people.
So I went home and called the pediatric neurologist, then sat down at the computer and started educating myself.
We had a 4 month wait for the appointment. (4 months! That's crazy!) During those 4 months, J.J. would sometime show no signs. And then one day while we were picking him up from his grandmas, his tics were so severe that we considered taking him to the ER.
As his appointment got closer, the tics went away. (Or so I thought.) I actually considers cancelling his appointment. The coughing, after all, I thought was allergies or possibly asthma. But, as I thought more about it, I decided it was better to keep his appointment instead of having to wait another 4 months to get in to see the specialist.
The day of his appointment came and nearly ended before seeing the specialist. We sat in the waiting room for an hour and then in the examining room for nearly 2 hours. We skipped lunch because we figured we would be there for an hour or maybe 2 and we'd eat after. As 4'oclock approached, the anger started growing. We had to threaten to leave in order to get the Dr. in to see us. ANYWAY. After examining him and asking us about our family history, they called it Tourettes. Only, they couldn't totally diagnose him with tourettes because the symptoms, as it often happens, were not in high gear that day. And we didn't know at the time that Stouty's family has a history of it. So as far as they knew, we didnt' have a family history. Only AFTER the appointment when I was talking to family members about it, did it come out that a sister actually has it and someone else (whom I won't name) won't admit it or go to the Dr. for a diagnoses. So people, KNOW YOUR FAMILY HISTORY.
J.J. can possibly grow out of this. Medication is not an option for us. (at this time.) There are too many side effects with the medication and this is something that we basically have to learn how to live with.
J.J.'s latest tics have been extending his arms out to the side. This lasted for about 2 weeks. And when that one stopped......our nights became awful.
Every tic has been something simple. Something that J.J. hardly even realizes that's happening. Something that a "stranger" or family member might dismiss as child play. Our newest tic is the bathroom. He constantly has to go to the bathroom. It was happening for nearly a week when we decided we better take him to the doctor, just to make sure there wasn't a bladder infection or even diabetes. But part of me knew, that this was just another tic. And I was right.
J.J.'s bathroom habits are annoying. (as I type this, he has been to the bathroom 8 times.) My water bill is suffering from this. Our sleep is suffering. When bedtime comes, he's sick of using the bathroom all day and now that he's tired, it turns into a big deal. He begins crying and begging us to help him fix it. All we can do is tell him that he has to try to control his body..and we tell him much more. This is one "tic" that we could do without. When he gets up in the middle of the night, it starts all over again. He gets pissed and can't be quiet or lay still and then we get pissed and we're up for an hour in the middle of the night dealing with it. I have a temper and when I'm lacking sleep, I get to my boiling point. All I can say is, Thank you God for giving me Stouty and not making me a "single" mother. I need sleep. So I'm hoping that the next tic comes soon and is easier to deal with.........