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TWO WEEKS LEFT! Putting the final touches on my speech

The moment I’m writing this, it’s exactly two weeks until I’m on that stage, holding my speech at the European Tourette Syndrome Conference in Athens, Greece! And that makes me SO nervous! It’s coming really close now, and I’m looking forward to it even more, but the nerves are starting to come as well! (And so are the tics and the chaos in my head.)

This past weekend, I wrote my second speech, which is more important to me than my first one (on co-morbidity), because this one is about my opinion, my voice. In this speech, I’ll talk about my view on therapy and treatment. but from a different viewing point — how to live with Tourette I think this factor is very often overlooked during therapy because we all focus on the symptoms. So hopefully I’ll inspire the people there to add this to their therapy or treatment.

Besides that, I’ll speak about positive aspects of Tourette and following your dreams. I’ll end with a sentence that’s been in my head since I knew I might go to Athens. It, at least for me, is an amazing ending, I can’t wait for you to hear it!

I really can’t explain it better than this without giving you the entire speech, so you’ll just have to wait to (hopefully) see it on YouTube! I’m trying to find a good camera, and I’ll ask my sister to video it so that I can put it on YouTube. A lot of people have told me they really wanted to see it, so hopefully, this way, I’ll even reach a bigger audience.

Also this weekend, I fixed the wardrobe issue. I’ve got everything I will wear, I just have to figure out which outfit I’ll be wearing which day!

Tomorrow I’ll have the final meeting with the therapists about the role plays and the other things I’ll be doing. And then it’s just practice, practice, practice! The hardest part is the pronunciation of some English words as “neurologist” and “behavioral therapy” (these are actually in one sentence!). Behavioral is almost impossible to the point that I wrote it down phonetically (bieheevjural), and I’m going to put it on my card like that as well!

That’s right, I’m making cards, so I’ll have something to remember my speech while I’m up there.

And finally, let’s not forget I’ll be in Athens! Being a huge history geek, I want to see a lot of the old ruins and buildings. I bought a travelers book about it and I was very happy to learn that almost everything is very close together. We’ll have one-and-a-half day (plus the nights, after the conference) to see Athens, and I actually think we’re going to pull it off!

I really can’t wait until it starts!

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LauraB

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