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TS by the Numbers

This is my life with Tourette Syndrome: by the numbers.

I’m Katie Danis. Pleased to meet you.

I’m an undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I run a public health and sex ed YouTube channel with two of my best friends. I’m training for an ultramarathon. And at age two, I was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome.

I’ve had the privilege of sharing my story in essay, Buzzfeed article, and video format. However, I’ve never attempted to quantify my condition. I’ve never identified the numerical impact of my TS or the life it affects. Until now.

If you’ll allow me, I’d like to bring the old TI-84 out of retirement and crunch the digits on my disorder.

This is my life with Tourette Syndrome: by the numbers.

Name: Katie Danis

Current Age: 19

Neurological Diagnoses: 1 (Tourette Syndrome)

Age diagnosed: 2

Psychiatric Diagnoses: 6 (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Anorexia Nervosa, Social Anxiety Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, Insomnia)

Age diagnosed: 13

Medications prescribed: 12

Psychiatrists seen: 6

Physical therapists seen: 2

Miles run: 64,130

Books read: 823

Unintentional all-nighters: 57

TS-related injuries: > 1000

Homeopathic treatments attempted: 122

Family members with TS: 2

Most common tics: 8 (Banging head, clearing throat, scratching skin, humming, clicking tongue, twitching leg, pulling eyebrows, jerking neck)

Times I failed my driving test: 2

Childhood role models with TS: 1 (my dad)

Current role models with TS: > 5 (Victoria Barrios, Tim Howard, Dan Aykroyd, Billie Eilish, my dad, and more)

Times moving house: 6

Age I left for boarding school: 16

Year I started college: 2018

Neurological disorder organizations at my university: 0 (So far.)

Average # of tics per minute: ~30

Highest # of tics per minute: ~300

Average # of intrusive thoughts per minute: ~10

Visible tics per minute: 2-20

Times I’ve been called “weird” to my face: > 200

Times I’ve been called “weird” behind my back: Unknown

Times I felt inferior for being “weird”: 0

My Tourette’s story
Create it Away,” a TS memoir
Buzzfeed’s “10 Things Tourette Syndrome Taught Me About Running

“Times I felt inferior for being “weird”: 0″