Nearing the end of her talk, my mom looks at me tenderly. Her face is glowing. She looks so beautiful I can’t begin to describe it.
“This is one amazing kid,” she says to the room. “Don’t ever give up on him. He’ll always surprise you and come through for you.”
After a long silence, there’s another voice in the room. It’s that of my English teacher, speaking her true thoughts for the first time.
“Cory is my best student,” she starts quietly, then her voice rises. “By far my best. His ideas get the other students excited to learn.”
The room is quiet again. Outside in the hallway, there are kids rushing somewhere. The English teacher’s compliment feels great, but one voice is probably not enough. If the group is beginning to change its mind, it’s impossible to tell.
The caseworker turns to me and asks if there’s anything I want to say. Before I can respond, the history teacher demands to know how I can possibly do all the work now when I couldn’t get it done before. Amazingly, she isn’t giving up. After what my mother has told her, I really don’t know what else I can say, so I just tell them all how I feel.
“Things have always been harder for me,” I say simply. “But that’s never stopped me, and it never will.”
Miracle Days
Chapter 70
IT SEEMED TO HAPPEN TO ME when I wasn’t even aware of it. Or maybe it occurred over a few days, or even weeks. You would think that if I’d known the exact moment of anything that’s ever happened in my life, it would be this.
It’s the last period of the school day toward the end of my junior year, and I’m doing pretty well. I still can’t believe that I sat through all eight periods again today. One reason may be that I’m not on most of the drugs that used to make me feel so out of it.
In history class the Civil War is coming alive for me. It’s as if I’m living back in that time, and the teacher likes my answers. The history teacher likes my answers! The history teacher — how about that! As usual, my hand has been shooting up in the air a lot, but only with questions and answers, not with my usual middle-finger salute.
When the period ends, I leave the room feeling that something important has changed, but I’m not sure what. I have an unusual sense of well-being, as if the electric current that usually races around my body has suddenly been turned way down, as though it’s on a dimmer.
At the exit I push open the door and step into bright sunshine. The puffy clouds in the sky are so interesting that I stop for a while to study them.
The clouds are lit from behind by the sun, which is highlighting their wispy edges and making them glow as if a great artist has painted them. There was a sky something like this in the mountains of Wyoming not so long ago.
I take a few more moments to watch the sky. There’s no hurry. I feel like I have all the time in the world.
Finally I walk toward the end of the parking lot, where my car is parked. On the way I pass the handicapped spots that I was told I could use for my dirt bike and that I always refused.
Walking to my car, I realize that I have an unusual amount of energy and concentration, plus I’m light on my feet.
Normally at this time of day I’d be totally exhausted and on edge, ready to go home and rest from my classes. My new feelings puzzle me. I play back the day in my mind and am happy to recall that none of my classes turned out to be a problem.
The realization comes over me, not like a bolt of lightning, as people say, but like a calm breeze that creeps into my mind and spreads a peaceful blanket of serenity.
I’m not ticcing. I’m not ticcing at all.
Chapter 71
THE THOUGHT IS SO MIRACULOUS, so impossible, that I automatically dismiss it. I can’t actually remember if it’s been this way all day, but I feel weak at the knees from the possibility that it might be true. I’m just standing there as other kids are passing by and noticing me, a few saying hello.
Out of habit I wait for familiar urges to come back — the need to contort my face, to hop or lurch forward, to dip to one side or bend at the waist. I count the seconds until my arm will undoubtedly shoot out three times in front of me to punch the air, or my neck will tilt up to the sky.
And what’s happening is nothing.
A different kind of panicky feeling begins to take hold of me, the fear that this is going to end any second.
I need to divert myself from thinking about ticcing because that’s what always brings it on.
In a little while, when the movements still aren’t happening, I test them by challenging myself to tic. Deliberately I jerk my hand in front of my chest, but I have no compulsion to complete the ritual with the usual two more thrusts.
I still think this is all a bizarre mistake, a miscalculation my brain has made that will soon be corrected.
Or maybe I’m dreaming the whole thing. I’ve dreamed it so many times before, but this seems real. Even if it’s crazy or is a temporary mistake or only lasts a short time, at least I know that it’s possible.
I travel the rest of the way to my car without a single hop and with a sense of wonder.
On the ten-minute drive home, my foot is steady on the gas pedal and I don’t have the involuntary stiffening of my leg that makes me speed up. I don’t jerk the wheel to the right or left, not even once. I don’t jack up the volume on the radio before turning it on.
When my mother greets me at the door, I’m too afraid to tell her what’s going on. Raising her hopes only to have them crushed again would be an unbearably unkind act, and it’s still too early to risk it.
Jessie is in the living room, and she flashes me a gentle smile. As I’ve gotten better, we’ve gotten closer again. I know she’s proud of how far I’ve come. As a senior, Jessie applied to six colleges and got accepted to five of them. She’s going after the degree in special ed that she’s always wanted. The thought of not having her around saddens me, but I have something else to think about today.
An hour later, the tics still haven’t returned, and I have to at least allow for the possibility that something has really changed.
By eight o’clock I’ve finished my homework in record time and I’m sitting at the computer, playing with some new ideas for an Internet marketing business.
My hands are unbelievably steady on the keys, and I feel no need to pound the table after every few words like I used to. My eyes and mouth are still.
This really is happening, isn’t it?
The doctors have said that Tourette’s symptoms improve over time for some people, but not all. Have I turned out to be one of the lucky ones?
If my parents have noticed a change, they aren’t saying anything, probably for the same reason I’m not. They’re conditioned not to mention my physical habits unless I do, but I know they’re always watching out of the corner of their eyes, praying to see exactly what’s happening now. Nothing at all.
Later, I head for bed in a state of total wonder but also apprehension. On the way up the stairs, I catch my mother looking at me.
“I know,” I tell her. “Don’t say anything.”
Chapter 72
THE NEXT MORNING I lie in bed, afraid to get up and see that I’m the same person I always was.
I can’t tell yet if anything’s changed because the best time for me is usually when I first wake up. I know I should be incredibly excited at the prospect of a day of being like everyone else, but excitement is always my enemy, and the fear that today I will return to the old me is almost paralyzing. I honestly don’t know if I could take the fall.
Still, I stand up, and I test myself.
Leaving my room for the shower, I remember that doorways can make me do a compulsive little triple shuffle step before I can pass through.
This time I sail through without anything happening.
Soon my body is enveloped in hot water and steam, and I’m sinking into a deep state of relaxation. I look down at the busted floor tiles . . . and wonder if I’m really done breaking them.
I get to the kitchen smoothly, letting the idea of a miracle sink in. The quiet feeling is with me again today, as though I’m under anesthesia but have remained awake and alert.
I want to shout my sudden happiness at the top of my lungs, to wake the world and say, Look at me, but I still don’t dare to assume that this is real.
I go to school feeling good but worried that this is where it will end. But even the stress of another day of sitting in the confined space of my classrooms isn’t changing me back. Today is starting like yesterday ended, completely calm.
My classes are easier than they’ve ever been, and I can’t stop myself from participating. Maybe I’m participating too much; one of my teachers asks me to give the other students a chance to share with the class. Fair enough. I can do that.
In between periods I walk down the halls like everyone else. It’s amazing to me what a luxury, what a gift, normal walking is. I’m not sure, but I think the kids are looking at me differently. They’re not avoiding my eyes like they do when I stumble or make a noise. A few of them greet me warmly as I pass by. I’m fascinated by the thought that today might be the first day I don’t get any strange looks or hear muffled laughter after I leave a hallway or room.
After school I walk the streets of my hometown as if for the very first time. In a way, it is.
The early-spring breeze feels good on my skin as I come to the pizza place where a lot of kids from the high school hang out. This is the same restaurant where a customer once called the police because she thought I was having seizures.
I talk to some kids I know — without twitching. I’m in full control. I have a new urge now, but it’s a good one — to be with everyone I’ve ever known and let them see me as I suddenly am. Now they can judge me for what I say and do, not how I move.
Chapter 73
LATER THAT NIGHT, when my family’s asleep, an idea takes shape that’s been rumbling around in my mind for hours, or maybe years. I sneak out of bed and hurry down the hallway stairs without making a sound.
I gently pry open the front door and leave the house.
The night is warm as I step up to my dirt bike and straddle the seat. I put it in neutral and walk the heavy machine out to the end of the driveway so the engine won’t wake anyone in our house.
Once I’m out on the street, the bike comes alive under me, and when I start moving, I look back at my home, my eyes filling with tears. For more than a decade, this has been my refuge and my prison. Most of the time I’ve been afraid to leave. But not tonight.
The engine sputters once when I rev it and shift into higher gear. Then it smooths to a purr. In a way, this is like what’s just happened to me. Sputtering, missing, then running smooth.
For the next few hours, I ride the streets of our town in darkness and anonymity, my bike and I in perfect harmony for the first time. The road, the whole world, is empty. Yet for me it’s never been so full of promise and hope.
I shift into third gear, give it the gas, and take off, laughing.
I am alive.
I am free.
I am flying with the wind.
I am me.
A Father’s Epilogue
IN JANUARY 2002, my son lay in the darkened basement of our house in a downward spiral of depression, alcohol addiction, and hopelessness, and he made the decision to change. He did it himself. Roughly three months later, he began to reclaim his life with astonishing new strength and an irrepressible determination to beat the overwhelming odds against him.
It had taken years of debilitating neurological problems to bring Cory close to his breaking point. He suffered from one of the most complex cases of OCD, Tourette’s syndrome, and anxiety disorder his doctors had ever seen. Even though our family lived through each and every moment of his resurrection, we could hardly believe that his recovery had happened. It was a miracle.
When the members of the high school administration decided to allow Cory to complete his junior year, they laid out a daunting number of requirements. In addition to having to take the new midterms, he had to make up some past midterm exams, including the history test, on which he received an A. Several weeks later, he took the final history exam for the fall semester, which he also aced. These accomplishments were achieved in major part by his studying hundreds of three-by-five note cards prepared and gone over time and again by his mother. Maybe a hundred hours’ worth.
Cory’s English teacher waived all the past smaller assignments and asked only for the junior-year formal paper. He completed this task as well, a phenomenal essay on Walt Whitman for which he also got an A.
After that spectacular show of what he could do, and because most of the teachers and administrators really were on his side, they had no choice but to pass him on to the next semester.
After that, Cory had only one surprising request, a very revealing one: that he be allowed to take a few advanced courses instead of just basic ones. He had won his chance to prove himself, and that’s what he set out to do.
During the remainder of that school year, teachers and students alike were astonished to see what the boy who once came to only a few basic-level classes a day — and for a while in a wheelchair — was capable of.
In the little time left in the spring term, Cory completed practically two terms at once without missing a single day. In the end he satisfied all of the school’s criteria, passed every exam, and earned an A average. His teachers voted him the most-improved student in a high school of seven hundred.
In his senior year, Cory’s progress continued just as dramatically.
That spring his name was called at the graduation ceremony on the same field where he’d once thrilled the crowd with his football play. On that fateful day the tears flowed freely, and not just from our family.
The main credit, of course, goes to Cory himself and his irrepressible spirit; also to one very special therapist who never left us even after she moved away; and to a few wonderful champions he had in our school system.
It also helped, we believe, that Cory was always told — and therefore always assumed — there was nothing in life he couldn’t accomplish, no matter what the obstacles.
Cory’s mother, his true angel, never faltered in that arena. Not once did I ever see my wife, Sophia, let up under pressure or give in to despair. She has always been, and remains, an endlessly loving, unselfish, and giving human being with no other agenda than her family’s well-being. I am certain beyond a doubt that her strength has become Cory’s, not to mention mine.
During his senior year, Cory applied to a number of colleges with the rest of his classmates. His résumé was unlike any of theirs, however. To offset gaps in his formal education caused by absences, he created a unique portfolio that presented an unusual record of achievements outside the classroom. This included his experience on the computer, his place of refuge during years of isolation from friends.
One day in April 2003, a little more than a year after he walked out of the wilderness camp, Cory opened a letter that informed him that, against all odds, he’d been accepted into the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. This was a moment for Cory and the rest of our family that was simply impossible to describe.
At Syracuse, Cory’s professors were so impressed with his computer marketing knowledge that he was offered his own office in the Information Studies School, one of only six, and he was even asked to lecture at one of their classes. He became the lead singer in a band and performed in front of hundreds of students, once receiving a cheering ovation from the same basketball team that had won a national championship.
As of this writing, some of Cory’s physical symptoms still return, but they are nowhere near as severe as they used to be. He is on very little medicine, and he’s not taking anything that coincided with a worsening of his symptoms in the past. Our family is convinced that his most extreme symptoms were caused by medications prescribed in good faith but with unhappy results, almost without exception. Cory’s b
attle to control OCD has been more successful, as he brings to bear his hard-won coping skills from Wellington. His optimism knows no bounds.
A complete cure for Tourette’s remains elusive. Within the past few years, however, a young man with a vastly more extreme movement disorder had a pioneering operation at the Cleveland Clinic. From reports we’ve heard, it stopped all of his symptoms instantly.
Since then a number of operations involving Tourette’s patients have been performed at this clinic and at other hospitals around the world. Exact information on their success is difficult to obtain, as official clearance is still pending, but we have heard that the results are promising, and there will be more trials.
Today, Cory is deeply involved in Internet marketing and has created a number of fledgling businesses of his own. He frequently makes trips to New York City to sing at karaoke clubs and is a lead singer in a really good band in New Jersey that’s just formed. As always, no obstacle seems too great for him.
Over the thirteen long, hard years that this story covers, Cory had dreams that some people would consider modest. He wanted to go to school, play sports, have friends, and be treated with respect. These are things a normal childhood provides, but they were not often Cory’s to enjoy. Yet despite his complex problems and many cruel setbacks, he always clung to the belief that he would survive his travails and achieve a happier life. And over time, this belief has only strengthened.
He has been to the bottom of the abyss, but he has been to the top of the mountain as well.
Appendix
Records and Medicines
Sample of extensive medical records detailing medicines, side effects, and behavior from September 29, 1999, through January 4, 2000.
Against Medical Advice Page 16
