Although she was only referred for diagnosis when she was 18, she’s been experiencing tics – involuntary spasms – since she was 12.<\/p>\n
“I spent a lot of time in high school suppressing the swearing tics, and then I would come home and it would cause these extreme outbursts. <\/p>\n
Now, I have more motor tics than verbal ones. My toes scrunch or my eyes blink or my head jerks.”<\/p>\n
It was her girlfriend Emma who first suggested she learn to drive, to boost her confidence. <\/p>\n
Although she’s unable to take her test at the moment because of the unpredictable nature of her condition, she’s glad it has entertained and informed. <\/p>\n
And maybe even inspired.<\/p>\n
“I’m not very tech savvy so I didn’t really understand “going viral”. It was cool but it was also a bit crazy,” she says.<\/p>\n
“I was thinking it was just a driving lesson, a big deal to me but I didn’t think that people watching it would also see how huge it was for someone like me to be driving.”<\/p>\n
Andrea has enjoyed becoming a role model for others.<\/p>\n
“I met a wonderful family who actually lived five minutes away from me and we just wouldn’t have crossed paths before. <\/p>\n
“They’ve got a son with Tourette’s. He was about six or seven at the time and he said that seeing the videos, seeing me driving makes him realise he can do that too.<\/p>\n
“That’s the way I saw John Davidson, as someone that had a job and was able to get on with his life and so it’s kind of cool that someone looks at me that way now.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although she was only referred for diagnosis when she was 18, she’s been experiencing tics – involuntary spasms…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-205392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}