My family and I were traveling back from a quick 4th of July trip this past summer when I suddenly began barking, and no matter how hard I tried I could not stop. This went on for hours, and completely puzzled and freaked out both me and my family. As soon as we got home, my mother emailed my physiatrist, and she felt that I could possibly have Tourettes. At our visit later that week she did indeed confirm that I had Tourettes and my life started to make sense; all those noises I had made, all those little twitches, that everyone wrote off as Joy being Joy, in fact were happening for a reason, and I was not just messed up. The decision was made to switch my ADHD medicine, and put me on an anti-anxiety medicine. Sadly, since this happened so close to when I was to leave for college, I ended up having to defer going to college for a year. While the change in medicines did seem to help, when we ended up upping my dosage of my ADHD medicine, it made my Tourettes worse. Since we had run out of choices for my ADHD medicine, my psychiatrist referred me to a Neurologist. In the month or so it took to get into the neurologist, I was having new tics on a daily basis, and had probably close to two hundred different vocal tics. My neurologist ended up prescribing me a medicine to try to help my tourettes, one of the 'safer' ones. Unfortunately, this medicine instead made my tourettes even more complex. My neurologist realized that my tourettes was out of his league, so he referred me to a tic specialist, but I was unable to get an appointment till the end of April. While tourettes has left me with many 'memorable' moments, one that really sticks out was when I returned to work for the first time after the trip this past summer. I was incredulously terrified about what people would think. I honestly considered not even showing up to work ever again. One of my mangers, Claire, told me if I was not comfortable being out on the floor (I work at a hands on science center), then she could find something in the back for me to do. But the way she said it, and the way she acted towards me, it was very evident that it was for my comfort, not hers. Thankfully, I choose to stay on the floor. But through those first few weeks, she was very supportive of me, and I honestly believe, that the way she acted and behaved towards me, helped drive my workplaces atmosphere towards my tourettes. Throughout this whole year, she has always been supportive of me. To be quite honest, if it were not for the way Claire reacted, and then all my other coworkers in turn, I would probably be too petrified to ever leave my house. But thankfully, I am not overcome with fear, but enjoy life as close to a 'normal' person as possible.