As a 12-year-old, Taylor Martinovich would sometimes become so violent, her parents had to pin her to the floor. At school, she sprinted out of the classroom to repeatedly slam her young body against a pole in the playground.
“Out of the blue, I jumped out of my seat, ran out of the class and found the nearest pole I could, and ran into it,” says Taylor, now 18. “Other times, I couldn’t help running into walls. I would sprint for the wall and just kind of smack into it.”
Taylor says she was aware of what she was doing but felt helpless to control it, so her classmates or her parents would have to drag her away and hold her until the impulse passed.
Watching Taylor’s violent episodes was disturbing for her school friends in Dargaville, but it was even more distressing for her parents, who for years had known their daughter was somehow different.
Her mum Robyn first noticed something might be wrong when, as a four-year-old, Taylor began regularly jerking her head to the left or the right. Then the unusual facial tics – excessive eye rolling, blinking and scrunching up her nose – began.
As Taylor got older, the tics began to worsen and Robyn sought help. A paediatrician quickly diagnosed Taylor with Tourette’s syndrome, a genetic neurological condition that causes involuntary physical tics; in extreme cases, violent ones. (Uncontrollable vocal outbursts can be another less common symptom.)
For Taylor, the involuntary facial tics eventually progressed to full body ones, which by intermediate school became more frequent and severe.
“My family would call them ‘tic attacks’. I would get them at school and usually have to go home about three times a week. They would sometimes last for 10 to 15 minutes and other times over an hour.
“I would jump up and keep running into walls or my legs would give out, or I’d kick and fling my arms out at random times,” says Taylor, whose two younger sisters, Holly and Renae, fortunately don’t suffer from the condition.
“Sometimes they would get so out of control, I would possibly end up hurting myself, so that’s when I would have to get someone to look after me. My parents would have to restrain me. It was scary.”
Taylor hopes to help young sufferers of the condition by sharing her experiences.
Bravely, she decided to talk to her classmates about her condition, and then the full school, so they would know how to help her.
“At first, everyone was confused, but the more I talked about it and explained what Tourette’s was, the more they understood and accepted it.”
Fortunately for Taylor, her Tourette’s symptoms eased by the time she was 15, as puberty ended, and she learned to control them through breathing techniques and other exercises. Today, she suffers an episode only if she is under too much stress.
“They can become bad if I get really tired but they’re nothing like they used to be. People who meet me now have no idea I have Tourette’s.”
She is thrilled to be finally free of the regular, incapacitating tics that controlled her life for so long, but best of all it means she has been able to train to become a flight attendant – a job she thought was well out of her reach when her Tourette’s was at its worst.
She earned a place at the New Zealand School of Tourism last year, where she did a nine-month course in international flight attending, and is now fully qualified.
“Every time I went on a plane while growing up, I loved watching flight attendants work. It has always been a dream of mine and now I’ve done the training, I want it even more.”
Taylor had to wait until she turned 18 in June before she could apply to airlines. She is now busy looking for work on a domestic route before hopefully starting on international flights.
She and her mum also want to help others suffering from Tourette’s syndrome, admitting their own ordeal was made more terrifying and confusing by the fact that little help or information was available to them in the early years of her diagnosis.
When her Tourette’s was at its worst, Taylor never dreamed she could become a flight attendant.
Taylor hopes by speaking out about her own experience, it will give people a better insight into the condition and give hope to young sufferers that there is light at the end of a sometimes very dark tunnel.
“In some ways, Tourette’s has added to my life. It’s taught me a lot of self-control and, in social situations, it’s helped me gain more confidence in myself. I used to be really shy and embarrassed about it, but I’ve learned to now openly embrace it.
“Tourette’s has made me realise if I can act like that in public and still be okay, then I can do anything!” she says with a smile.
Words: Michele Crawshaw
