One order of boring, please

It's been a long day.

Shep started doing this funny half-yawn thing yesterday. By this morning it had evolved into a full-blown facial tic, with his eyes squinting shut and his mouth popping open. He's doing it on a pretty continual basis, every 10-20 seconds or so. It was weird enough that Tom and I packed him up and headed to Children's. No need to mess around with the pediatrician, who would inevitably send us to the next level for evaluation.

Long story short, after three hours in a very small room, they've given him the diagnosis of transient tic disorder. This seems to mean that he developed some tic, they don't really know why, but they're fairly certain it will go away in the next month or so.

We have a follow-up appointment with a neurologist, which is good. I want someone who spends his whole day looking at kids with these same things to look at Shep and say, "Yup…that's what it is. He'll be fine." We've had a handful of friends with bigger issues, and it reminds me not to be complacent when it comes to my child's health and well-being.

It's hard to look at his little face contorting and moving without his initiating it. It's that helpless feeling you have as a parent. I just want to reach into his head and hit the off switch on whatever neurons are misfiring. The upside is that he doesn't seem to know he's doing it, it doesn't seem to happen when he eats and sleeps, and it doesn't seem to bother him.

I know this seems all gloomy and glass half-empty. It's really not. The prognosis seems just fine at the moment. It's just…ugh. I just want him to be back to normal so I can stop fretting.