Against Medical Advice

Now available in trade paperback, 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 this nonfiction work with the pace of a thriller, Patterson tells the extraordinary and dramatic true story of one family's struggle with an agonizing medical mystery that begins when the Friedmans' five-year-old son starts having irrepressible tics and involuntary utterances.