When Oliver was seven years old, he started involuntarily nodding his head and blinking excessively. He himself was not aware of subtle tics. Even his parents had no idea that these were the first manifestations of Tourette’s syndrome.
“The district doctor with whom I consulted sent us to the ophthalmologist. She said that maybe his eyes hurt,” remembers Barbora Čubíková, Oliver’s mother.
There was no problem with the eyes, and when the tics went away after a few days, it seemed like a one-time thing.
It wasn’t long before the tics were back. This time, Oliver not only shook his head, but also threw up his hands. He didn’t know why he was doing it, but he knew he couldn’t stop it. The pediatrician sent the Čubíkovs to the emergency room. They performed an EEG examination on the boy, on the basis of which they ruled out that these were manifestations of epilepsy. The doctor told the parents that these were tics and advised them to see a psychologist.
“He has tics – that’s all they told us. You then spend the entire drive home thinking about where you failed as a parent. After all, we didn’t have traumatic events at home that would cause this,” recalls the boy’s mother.
It was February 2020 and news about the spreading coronavirus began to flood the public space. Soon everything was closed and people stayed at home. Oliver did not make it to the psychologist’s visit. “The children stopped going to school, so I thought it could be because of stress from school and that the tics would stop. They didn’t stop,” says Barbora Čubíková.
Snapping fingers and clicking teeth were added to the original tics. The parents had no choice but to search the Internet for causes, treatment, progress, something to help Oliver. “We were at a loss and under stress. Oliver also cried because the tics were painful. After the whole day, his hands and teeth hurt in the evening,” describes the mother. According to her, it was the worst
