Why am I so wordy? (does Bob have Tourettes?)

[MicroBob]

i was probably going faster that a half-second. it was mostly in my head...or kind of muttering...but also partly out loud.

As I said....my parents were losing their freaking minds because it was on a family drive to Wisconsin to visit all my relatives.

Anyway, I would go something like "47-thousand, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10....etc" and eventually "47-thousand-one-hundred, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6" etc.


Couple of punch-lines:
I counted out loud when i was getting to, "99,999....1-million!!!"
and then my Dad who was already going insane made the mistake of reminding me that 100,000 comes after 99,999....not 1-million. So I said, "Oh...Okay!!" "100,000, 100-thousand-and-1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9..." blah blah blah.

He really wasn't thinking at that moment.

Through the whole vacation various relatives of mine were pretty interested in this weird 7-old nephew/cousin/whatever who just sat there through the whole week counting to a million.

--------------------

Fast-forward to March, 2004 - I go back to Wisconsin after my grandfather passed-away. This also tended to be something of a family reunion of course. I ran into a couple of relatives who had not seen me since that family vacation and that was all they could talk about.

None were surprised that I was doing so well in poker (and was ready to quit my job). They figure I'm mathematically inclined enough to succeed at it.

At the time I did it (and other such numbers-obsessed activities) many relatives and teachers assumed that i was going to go to MIT and be some kind of math genius.
That really didn't pan-out. I could barely get past college calculus.

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
I've often carried on an hour long conversations about an off-the-cuff comment that you would struggle to talk about for 30 seconds with an everyday person.

[/ QUOTE ]


This is EXACTLY me.
The littlest thing pops into my head in mid-conversation and I kind of blurt out that new idea and then make about 5 observations about it....and then one of those observations reminds me of something else and I go on another completely unrelated tangent.

It happens with people talking to me as well....they will say something and in mid-sentence something will trigger an idea in me that I might blurt-out because I might be so excited about that idea.


Sometimes I can be pretty funny.
But other times it is obviously just plain rude to interrupt people in this manner and go into completely different topics.

[MicroBob]

Actually...I like me a lot.


but talking so much bothers me also.
I generally am fine fitting-in for the most part. It's not that.
But it is an excessive trait of mine.


It's one thing to be really passionate about so many ideas like I am.

But I do think it can be trying to be with me....particularly for ex-wife, GF's who REALLY try and are just patient waiting for me to slow-down and take a breath.
Well, sometimes that just doesn't happen.

So now I tell my GF that it's okay to tell me when I'm talking too much. Because I do need to be put in my place sometimes and i really do want to slow down....so now I'm asking her for her assitance.

the poor girl needs a freaking break now and then and it's just not fair to her.


It's not the worst thing in the world, i know...but I want to work on it simply because I am striving to be a better person.


Combining my chattyness with other people as well as my obsessive posting frequency and I think it's obvious this is something in my life i could improve upon in some ways.

Although I still expect that I'll always be talkative.


I could list right-away 3 more ideas that just occred to me related to this....but I'm going to take a step right now and not go off on more tangents.

[MicroBob]

Wanted to mention my latest 'episode'.


Sitting at the window in Quizno's an hour or so ago.

Specifically was just watching traffic and enjoying my chicken-corn chowder and was thinking at that moment about the 2+2 fantasy-baseball league on yahoo.
I signed-up for it and paid $30 and drafted a team and haven't bothered doing ANYTHING with it (haven't even checked on it) and was thinking it was kind of silly to pay money for it if I wasn't really going to play.


Then I blurted under my breath, "I hate them all! I hate them all!"

Then I kind of laughed and thought, "well...I guess I'll share this with anyone following the Bob-tourettes thread."


BTW - as far as I know....I do NOT hate everyone in the 2+2 fantasy-baseball league.

[budman]

It is very common for those who do have tourette's sydrome to have the symptoms/ tics be at their worst during puberty. We are told that they will gradually ease after puberty.

Some of your symptoms do sound like tics. There is a continuum of severity and the treatment given depends on it. If the tics are debilitating then there are medicines that can help. But they all have side effects that can be worse than the tics.

It is very rare among tourette's sufferers to have verbalized tics. You might just be an angry person. I don't know if tourette's makes a person talkative, but sometimes my son runs on and on.

Also, people with tourette's generally have other problems as well. It is very common to have OCD and ADD. This complicates the treatment of tourette's as the medicine that makes one problem better usually makes at least one of the others worse. At our medicine check-ups, we decide what is the biggest problem for my son and we treat that.

Also, if you did have these problems growing up and had to deal with them without the benefit of medicine or counselling, then you certainly might have missed out on a lot of social cues and might be a little immature.

If you do have tourette's, it sounds like a very mild case. Consider yourself lucky. It is nothing to be ashamed of.

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
Also, if you did have these problems growing up and had to deal with them without the benefit of medicine or counselling, then you certainly might have missed out on a lot of social cues and might be a little immature.

[/ QUOTE ]


Doctors thought I had allergies.
I think your evaluation is VERY likely correct.

Some of the observations made in this thread are frightingly accurate.
Particularly the one about always going off on conversational tangents. That is a REAL problem with me to the extent that I know of no one who does it with greater frequency.
As well this particular comment evaluating why I'm fairly immature in many ways being possibly due to lack of proper evaluation earlier in life was something that hadn't really occured to me but is almost certainly correct.


The observations that are not correct imo include:

- not liking myself. I actually like myself a lot.

- being an angry person and thus having the blurts. I don't think this is correct either as they don't come at times when I'm angry really.

- insecurty. this is only partly correct as it USED to be a problem but I don't believe it is anymore. But it is possible that the insecurity that helped feed into my chattyness just created a talking pattern that has continued.


I neglected to mention a certain obsession with repetition also which is very related to autism obviously.
It relates to my counting to a million bit when I was 7 as well as my career as a baseball broadcaster. For the most part you're just saying the same thing over and over again during a baseball broadcast while just trying to mix things up for variety-sake.
But there are only so many ways you can say, "He swings...and here's a fly-ball to right-field."


So the repetition thing should be considered somehow as well.
Additionally, when I am going on and on about something I also have a tendency to say the same thing in about 5 or 10 different ways pretty much.



Anyway, thanks for the observations. This has become more than just a post where I say, "Gee! look how weird I am!"
It has really been an eye-opener about certain dominating aspects of myself.

[HRFats]

Bob - I am a 37yo male with tourette's syndrome. I was diagnosed when I was 14 and it was a relief. I have a mild case - facial tics such as blinking, vocalizations such as sniffling and clearing my throat, etc. These wax and wane for no apparant reason. The tics were worse when I was a teen. The symptoms you mentioned - at least most of them - point to TS. Only 10% of people with TS have the uncontrolled vocalizations but they are usually in public with others around. The outbursts in the car are almost certainly related to TS. People with TS tend to suppress tics (as best they can) during the day at work or school or even around family. Alone in the car and often times at home in the evening our tics will increase as a release from the suppression that occurred in the day. I LOVE to yell in the car for no reason.

Bob, the diagnoses is KEY. What a huge relief I felt when I was diagnosed at 14. I showed signs of TS beginning at 6 yrs old. It was painful to deal with some unknown problem until I was 14. Go see a nuerologist and get a diagnosis. Knowing what you have helps you understand why you do what you do.

And I am a very well adjusted person with a full time job, wife and three kids. My TS is a part of me and I wouldn't change that...

PM me if you want more info and/or links on TS...

[MicroBob]

cool. thanks for your ideas and support.


[ QUOTE ]
such as sniffling and clearing my throat,

[/ QUOTE ]


yes!!!
i believe i mentioned earlier that this was something I do.

my mom sniffs some i have recently noticed also.

my sniffs and snorts would change each 6 mths or so. one was a REALLY bad snort type thing when i was just sitting there supposedly trying to breathe normally.
it felt like i 'needed' to do it...kind of like i wasn't getting enough oxygen even though i really was and i had this urge to snort.

i was travelling with hockey teams as their broadcaster at the time and wasn't aware i was doing it and they would turn around and say 'dude...are you sick or something? you sound horrible." i called it 'allergies'.


similar when i played a live-satellite at the WPO in Tunica. didn't even realize that i kept clearing my throat. guy next to me said, 'is your throat dry? do you need a drink?'

again...when i was a kid it was all diagnosed as allergies.


i had never heard of tourettes sufferers having breathing and sniffing things as part of their condition but, again, i have never studied it and have been basically undiagnosed all this time (although pretty much came to the conclusion when I was 26 or 27 or so with the assistance of my ex-wife).


if you want to send me links/articles feel free to post them here or PM me.

thanks for your observations.

[disjunction]

Having read this whole thread I agree with this guy the most.

To me it sounds like med-student syndrome, tendency to think you have every disease that you read about [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

One can argue that mental illnesses are not things that you have or don't have, but rather a graded continuum. You seem to be waaaay in the "normal" range. I blurt out stuff a lot more than you and I've never seriously worried about it. As for Asperger's (i.e., autism light or "Rain Man" light), my personal conjecture is that it's the result of having two copies of a "smart gene" which gives you the ability to concentrate, but in Asperger's and autism it goes too far. The relatives of people with Asperger's, though, would be really smart under this conjecture.

I only have a bachelor's in psychology, and that was cognitive psych (not abnormal psych), so take this for what it's worth.

I have more to add but I wouldn't want to talk too much [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[MicroBob]

Hi again all -

I posted much of this thread over on my blog and my Mom read it and had some further ideas as well. She's also feeling pretty guilty for not getting me diagnosed earlier...but my ticks weren't THAT bad...it just looked like I was blinking a lot most of the time and several doctors said it was allergies.

Anyway - here is some further background on little old me, some of these things I didn't even know about (like not following where she was pointing) until now:


we just didn't know -- and we loved you so -- and, yes, sometimes you did drive me a little crazy -- but if we had only known to insist that you be tested for various tics, we could have relieved us all. the thing was that you were so smart at such a young age.


bob, there just aren't that many children at age 2 1/2 that have begun reading and then are reading long letters from their teachers at 4. your montessori school teacher said she had been teaching for 20 years and had never had a child who was so mathmatically capable. your were squaring and cubing on your little math-mat when you were 4 or 5 - before you started kindergarten.

you also knew how to skip count all the numbers - like 6 - 12 - 18 - 24, etc


but there were other things that you were very late in doing - like you had no idea how to blow your nose - very very hard for you to learn how to tie your shoes or button your shirt, or ride a bike. you never wanted to engage in imaginative play - your friend kristen helped you do that a bit - but you would get bored when other kids (in springdale) wanted to play w/ trucks - you would come inside so you could get back to your calculator (favorite toy) and number games and you were fascinated w/ numbers from l8 months. i dared not take you by anything that had numbers (like toys or anything) becuase you might have a tantrum if you didn't get it.

also, i remember when you were a small child and i would point to something and you wouldn't follow my finger - you would just continue to look at me - i have read that this is something that ausbergers and autism children do -- so maybe you have some version of several things, including allergies and add.

i remember joking once about things that you didn't automatically know how to do - that if bob wasn't brilliant, i would think he was somewhat retarded. but that was my ignorance -

i am glad you are interested in this now and would love it if you would see some specialists just to know

this would just be so informative for you and give you some peace knowing.
and i really like all the feedback you got on this from your blogger buddies. by the way, i think i read that bill gates has some level of ausperger's. i odn't think it is completely true that a/s people can not form relationships - maybe some can't - but others can - there is such a large spectrum on the line for autism, auspergers's, etc.

i think our minds/brains are fascinating.