character in the very start of the book. He starts the story by showing the main character, Sam Carrier, in the pediatrician 's office being officially diagnosed with Tourette 's at the age of six and the doctor already suggesting medications for Sam to take. (Jerk, California) Though Friesen wasn’t officially diagnosed with Tourette’s at such a young age as Sam was in the novel, the signs were there for Friesen but were overlooked due to always moving energetic and moving at a young age. When Friesen started junior high school, his seizures started. After having his first seizure in the middle of a class, he faced social isolation from his classmates, “The lesson I learned from that is, you’re totally alone. There are other learning disorders and disabilities; you can’t see them. We can hide them…” (PsychologyToday.com) Friesen tries to hide his Tourettes and seizures from his classmates, but hiding these two conditions in his teens was hard and ultimately resulted in him fully isolating himself from people in his basement bedroom. Friesen recalls not going to school very often for fear of being different from everyone else in his school, “I would try to go to school a day a week, two days a week. And the truth is, I would make it a period. I was so mortified by how I looked and what overtook me.” ( …show more content…
With his school attendance up to a full week of school, it lead to excessive bullying from students because of the Tourettes and seizures that overtook him. “My grand mals became once every month. But every day, I would have petit