When Ellie Grant suddenly developed Tourette’s syndrome she worried she would never find a boyfriend who could put up with her inappropriate outbursts.
But the 22-year-old found the perfect match in her deaf partner, Jordan Pettifer, who endures her uncontrollable ticks by switching off his hearing aid.
Ellie lived a totally normal life until she started blurting out the word ‘marshmallow’ while shopping in the supermarket a year ago.
By the next day she was involuntarily yelling swear words and racial insults and began lashing out with kicks and punches.
The youth worker was baffled by her unusual symptoms until she was diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological condition which affects the brain and nervous system.
Ellie was so embarrassed by her behaviour she retreated behind her front door, gave up work and became a recluse.
But she has finally found love after meeting her now-boyfriend Jordan, 22, who isn’t bothered at all by her potty-mouth – because he is deaf.
He even turns off his hearing aid to make Ellie feel more comfortable and her mum, Caroline, affectionately calls the pair ‘The Undateables’ after the TV show.
Loved-up Ellie, from Ironville, Nottingham, said: “We’re a match made in heaven.
“At the beginning Jordan would just switch his hearing aid off and if he wanted to talk to me he would just look at me and lip read.
“It meant he didn’t hear any of my rude vulgar outbursts and it just made me feel so comfortable.
“He said to me ‘if you don’t want me to hear them then I won’t’ and that was that.
“He was oblivious to it all and it made me realise we are just meant for each other.”
Ellie was working as a community support worker when she started ‘ticking’ while queuing in a supermarket last January.
She found herself unable to stop blurting out ‘marshmallow’ and immediately called her doctor for an appointment after running back to her car in shame.
By the time she saw her GP the next day, her ticks had already increased ten-fold, and she began shouting words like ‘n****r’ – as well as ‘Japan’ and ‘I’m a t**t’.
“My arms were smacking my face as I was sat there in the waiting room,” she recalled.
“I was being horrible to everyone. There were a lot of swear words, and stuff like ‘carry on looking at me and I’ll take you to Japan’. It was so random and all came on so quickly.”
Mortified Ellie was told she should see a specialist and went home to break the news of her unusual new trait to her mum.
The pair rushed to A&E at King’s Mill Hospital in Mansfield where MRI scans confirmed she was not suffering from brain damage, and weeks later the family discovered she had Tourette’s.
Ellie was so mortified she went on to develop OCD and anxiety, and gave up work as well as cutting herself off from friends and family, shutting herself away in her room.
But in late February last year her aunt, Annie, took Ellie out for a drink at her local pub, where she bumped into Jordan.
Ellie said: “Jordan was in the pub and he was the only person not looking at me. Everyone else was laughing and staring and having conversations about me.
“I thought ‘why isn’t he?’. I went outside and he also came out. Then I saw his hearing aid and I started saying ‘deaf, deaf’ – it was a new tick.
“I was like ‘oh god, I’m sorry’ and he said ‘I’m deaf, it doesn’t matter what you said, I can’t hear you’.
“It was amazing and we just hit it off straight away.”
One of Ellie’s biggest fears was staying over at his house because her ticks continue through the night – but Jordan immediately put her at ease.
“He said he turned off his hearing aid through the night so he wouldn’t be able to hear me at all,” she said. “I thought ‘this is amazing’.”
The pair moved in with each other in July and doting Jordan is now a carer for Ellie, who suffers severe physical ticks, as well as her verbal outbursts.
“I was keeping my mum up at night, but now the only person I keep up in the night is our dog,” Ellie said.
Jordan, who has been 97 per cent deaf since getting meningitis aged five, said: “Meeting Ellie completed me.
“Her ticks were never a problem for me – I thought it was cute if I’m being honest.
“I used to get frustrated not being able to hear things properly but we even each other out.
“Things I can’t do like phone calls she does, things she can’t do like chop food I do.
“I could never imagine life with out her now.
“As Ellie’s mum says we’re the ‘Undateables’ and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
