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<\/p>\nSharn Davidson has lived with Tourette syndrome (TS), a neurological condition that causes involuntary movements and vocalisations, known as tics, for most of her life.<\/p>\n
Her Tourette’s takes an unusual form \u2014 her tic involves making two distinct roaring sounds, which she describes as dinosaur noises.<\/p>\n
“They definitely sound different. One is really high-pitched, screechy, and the other is more ‘raptory’,” Ms Davidson says.<\/p>\n
The Perth high-school teacher and mother of three says the kids in her life aren’t bothered by the noises; in fact, they think they are hilarious and have given them names.<\/p>\n
“My dinosaurs’ names are Kevin and Terry,” she says.<\/p>\n
“My year 12 students actually named Kevin, and my children named Terry.”<\/p>\n
Of the two, Kevin is more talkative and comes out more often.<\/p>\n
“He’s so loud and noisy,” Ms Davidson says.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sharn Davidson’s tattoos of the two dinosaurs that “live inside her”, Terry and Kevin. (ABC News: Christine Layton)<\/p>\n
Trauma a trigger for tics<\/p>\n
As a child, Ms Davidson had the odd tic, roughly once a month, for years without knowing she had Tourette’s.<\/p>\n
But after witnessing a traumatic incident on a freeway when she was 21, her tics increased to more than 100 a day.<\/p>\n
“It was really random. It was a really obscure event. [The woman on the freeway] was driving, said she wanted to prove her innocence, and tried to end her own life in her car,” she says.<\/p>\n
“Luckily, she did not successfully do that, and all the people on site were really cool and helped and stopped her.<\/p>\n
“But it was just like a really profound moment, I suppose, for me.”<\/p>\n
After her tics dramatically increased, Ms Davidson went in search of answers, but it took five years for a doctor to tell her what was going on.<\/p>\n
“I went to quite a few doctors and was lucky enough to come across a gentleman who said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s just Tourette’s’,” she says.<\/p>\n
“It was kind of cool actually. It’s nice to be able to put a label on something that you do that you don’t have any control over.”<\/p>\n
She has realised that stress is a trigger, and that means that the noises often come out when they are least welcome.<\/p>\n
“Inappropriate situations really trigger me,” she says.<\/p>\n
“[It happens in] situations that I’m not supposed to do it in \u2014 classrooms, in libraries, during exams, lots of times when I don’t know people.”<\/p>\n
Living with dinosaurs<\/p>\n
When the ABC met Ms Davidson, she was with her own children and 40 other kids and parents at a road safety workshop when a roar came out.<\/p>\n
She is now accomplished at handling such situations and simply announced, without embarrassment, “I have Tourette’s; I make dinosaur noises, sorry,” and the workshop continued without fuss.<\/p>\n
She also uses her tics in the classroom to educate her students about diversity.<\/p>\n
“I could take medication for it, but I really don’t feel that that’s necessary,” she says.<\/p>\n
“I think that if you make your differences into something really fun and something that doesn’t bother you, then I think other people reflect that and they feel the same way.<\/p>\n
“I am quite lucky; I have quite a mild form of Tourette’s.”<\/p>\n
She also has students who have been diagnosed with the syndrome and tells them about her tics.<\/p>\n
“I don’t obviously tell them about the road incident or anything like that. That’s too much for tiny people,” she says.<\/p>\n
“But they feel a little bit better that there is somebody out there who doesn’t hide away, it’s not shameful.<\/p>\n
“It’s something that I embrace, something that I make a part of my personality.”<\/p>\n
She now has two tattoos on her arms of Kevin and Terry, the dinosaurs she’s welcomed into her life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sharn Davidson has lived with Tourette syndrome (TS), a neurological condition that causes involuntary movements and vocalisations, known…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[18034,9098,9097,64,63,227496,137,227497,227495,75822,75817,227494],"class_list":["post-435622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-18034","tag-720-perth","tag-abc-radio-perth","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dinosaur-roar","tag-health","tag-living-with-tourettes","tag-sharn-davidson","tag-tics","tag-tourettes","tag-tourettes-syndrome"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}