Against Medical Advice

This is the heart-rending drama of one family's courage, heartbreak, sacrifice, and triumph in confronting an agonizing medical condition, written by two master storytellers.
Cory Friedman woke up one morning when he was five years old with the uncontrollable urge to twitch his neck and his life was never the same again. From that day forward his life became a hell of uncontrollable tics, urges, and involuntary utterances. Eventually he is diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive disorder, and Cory embarks on an excruciating journey from specialist to specialist, enduring countless combinations of medications in wildly varying doses. Soon it becomes unclear what tics are symptoms of his disease and what are side effects of the drugs. The only certainty is that it kept getting worse. Despite his lack of control, Cory is aware of every embarrassing movement, and sensitive to every person's reaction to his often aggravating presence. Simply put: Cory Friedman's life is a living hell.
Against Medical Advice is the true story of one family's decades-long battle for survival in the face of extraordinary difficulties and a rigid medical establishment.
"In my thirteen-year search for help, I traveled to places far from home and met many people, young and old, with medical conditions so extreme that I could not have imagined they existed. I will never forget these special friends and their heroic battles with the phantoms that inhabited their minds. I understand them, and they understand me. I hope that this account of my life, which in many ways might be similar to theirs, will give them and others like them a measure of comfort and hope. And I’m grateful to my father and to James Patterson for helping to tell my story to the many people who might benefit from it."