There seems to be a villain living in my mind, controlling my body to keep twitching
The father always subconsciously wanted to cover the neckline of Nobita (pseudonym) that had been bitten to tatters.
For this middle-aged man, it was cruel to admit that his son was "different" from his peers.
However, the traces of the struggle against the disease in the past few years cannot be hidden, except for the air tickets and train tickets to and from Chongqing and Hangzhou, which are like scars printed on Nobita's heart, and it will take some time to heal.
Nobita is 13 years old this year. He has a sister who is ten years older than him. His father goes out to work and his mother makes a living by farming in his hometown.
The family's original peaceful life was broken when he entered junior high school: he repeatedly raised his head, stomped his feet, cleared his throat, and even made various strange noises in class... In the end, he had to drop out of school.
Since then, his father took Nobita to seek medical treatment, and the true face of the strange disease was finally revealed - tic disorder.
All kinds of strange noises in class, junior high school teenagers reluctantly suspended
Nobita's illness first appeared when he was six years old. At first, he blinked, cleared his throat, and twisted his neck disobediently. His father thought Nobita was unwell, so he took him to visit the ophthalmology, ENT, orthopedics, and pediatrics one by one. After running down, the doctor finally diagnosed: tic disorder. After taking the medicine, Nobita's symptoms improved.
So the family didn't take it too seriously at first, thinking it was just an episode of raising a child.
But mines buried in the body always explode.
As he got older, Nobita's study pressure was increasing day by day. At the critical moment when he was in the sixth grade, he began to "magic obstacles": blinking more and more frequently in class, there seemed to be needles on the stool under him, sitting without stopping, shrugging his shoulders , shaking his legs, making faces, like a bird living in his throat, and calling out from time to time.
The head teacher wanted to ask Nobita's father for an explanation. After learning that it was a disease, he explained it to the whole class, and everyone expressed their understanding.
After entering junior high school, just a few days after school started, the teacher called Nobita's father to the school to communicate.
Considering that Nobita may have just arrived in a new and unfamiliar environment, the teacher said to observe it for a month.
Under the heavy pressure of many parties, Nobita's condition became even stronger: the sound of stepping on the ground became louder and louder in class, his mouth was always chattering, and his classmates and parents complained one after another... The father and son were helpless and had no choice but to make a decision: to suspend school.
The clothes were bitten with tooth marks, Chongqing father and son traveled thousands of miles to seek medical treatment
Nobita said that his brain was awake when he had the disease, but his body was not obeying orders. "It seems like a villain lives in my mind, controlling my body." Nobita thought of a lot of ways for this.
First, he stuffed something into his mouth, thinking that he could stop screaming by biting the pen tightly; after several attempts to no avail, he began to bite the collar again. Even if he was wrapped in a coat, Qian Bao reporters could still see that he had left a mark on his inner shirt. The next line of evidence; finally, in a hurry, he even began to bite himself so hard that a fingernail-sized ulcer appeared on the mucosa of the right oral cavity...
The repeated stomps and collisions caused Nobita's heels to grow a thick layer of skin; his toes were not spared, and the nails were hard embedded in the flesh, resulting in severe paronychia.
In the past two years, my father has been unemployed at home and took Nobita to seek medical treatment.
In the beginning, powerful western medicines had an effect on Nobita, but as the disease recurred and the dosage continued to increase, the symptoms could not be controlled. The doctor said Nobita was a refractory tic disorder.
The adverse reactions of the drug also gradually appeared, such as lethargy, increased appetite, and decreased memory... The youth's vitality was exhausted.
After many inquiries, Nobita and his son traveled thousands of miles across the province and came to the team of Director Chen Yuyan of the Department of Pediatrics of Zhejiang Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine to seek treatment.
Tic disorder is a chronic neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by rapid, sudden, repetitive, single or multiple muscle movement twitches or vocal twitches.
Refractory tic disorder seriously affects the patient's learning, life, interpersonal communication and other social functions and physical and mental health, which is a difficult problem in the current field of tic disorder treatment.
Nobita has been in the province for half a year of traditional Chinese medicine, psychological mindfulness intervention, virtual reality VR technology, and repetitive transcranial magnetic stabbing technology. During each hospitalization evaluation, his condition improved every time, and the repeated cases gradually decreased.
At present, he only occasionally twists his neck when he gets emotional.
Talking about returning to school, their eyes glow
In the ward next door to Nobita, the Qian Bao reporter also met a girl in a similar situation, Tingting (pseudonym).
Tingting is 15 years old this year, and her grades have always been above average. She has danced at a professional level since elementary school.
But such an excellent child has been out of school for nearly two years at home.
It is understood that Tingting had symptoms such as blinking involuntarily and clearing her throat when she was in kindergarten. In fact, the treatment has not been interrupted, but it has been stable all the time, and she has grown up smoothly with children of the same age.
However, after entering junior high school, the academic pressure increases, which gradually worsens the symptoms. After the attacks become more frequent, the self-esteem of the adolescent children suffers, and negative emotions such as anxiety and depression follow, and the disease falls into a vicious circle.
The most serious one, Tingting after physical education class, suddenly burst into twitching, the upper body and lower body twitched in opposite directions, only heard a "click" in her ears, and then went to the hospital for examination: rib fracture.
During the days of her treatment in the Pediatrics Department in the province, her sleep disturbance and anxiety have been significantly relieved, her tics have gradually been controlled, and more importantly, she seems to have regained a little self-confidence. She will practice basic skills in the ward and sometimes show her to the doctor. Jazz dance.
The tic disorder, which scientists have not yet been able to decipher, has cast a grey mark on the childhoods of Nobita and Tingting.
However, many medical experts, including Chen Yuyan, have been working hard to help these children find more colors in their lives through multidisciplinary collaborative diagnosis and treatment, and integration of traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine.
Chen Yuyan said that children with tics have no problem with their intelligence and physical strength.
Suspension from school to take care of "sickness" at home does not cure tics. Interruption of studies sometimes makes it difficult to recover in the future.
If the condition is serious, you can rest for a while and wait for the symptoms to ease before going to school.
In the face of Nobita and Tingting, Qian Bao reporters were careful throughout the interview, for fear that inappropriate words would irritate or hurt them, but when they talked about the topic of "have you ever thought about going back to school?" light.
The darker the sky and the brighter the stars, these children with refractory tics are equally eager to shine in the face of adversity.
Suspension from school is like cutting off its wings. How can young eagles give up soaring? What they need is not only medical treatment, but also the understanding, tolerance and care of their families, schools and society.