A reader emails:
I actually keep tabs on AIDS research and treatment (pretty much) and I didn’t realize anyone is able to take “drug holidays” (don’t know if you use that term – that’s what all the child psychiatrists call it).
You’ve lived a miracle.
We have, too, in our way. Our 16-year old autistic son is able to live with us, attend his own high school here in town, and have a life solely due to medication. In any other era he would have been “placed” long before now. Placed out of home, and in restraints.
He was one of the first autistic children in the country to take Risperdal (around the time the protease inhibitors came out, as a matter of fact) and after that everything changed. That was our miracle. He’s still autistic to beat the band, so we’re working on, and waiting for, our next miracle.
But this one gave us our son. (So-Yay, big pharma! I’m with you on that one.)
I’m happy for you, and I think I know something about your courage and strength, although I don’t yet know very much about death.
A few years ago I saw a photo of a mother, a farm woman, sitting with her grown autistic son. The son was wearing leather gloves to protect his hands because he was so self-abusive, and he was doing some nutty thing or other, with a telephone, I think. The mom had her face kind of sunk down on her hands, and she was smiling, and maybe even laughing a little, and looking straight into the camera. Naturally her son wasn’t looking anywhere near the camera; he was off in autism-space somewhere. But he looked perfectly comfortable, -sitting next to his mom.
I always thought that photo should be called, “Still here.”
That’s how I’m thinking of you today: Still here. –
Be sure to have someone take a picture!
I will. One of the weirdly wonderful things about survival is how it also connects you to people in very different circumstances who nevertheless see what you’re talking about. The story of my own spiritual, physical and emotional survival is told in my last book, “Love Undetectable.” I fear some people didn’t read it thinking it was about AIDS. It is and isn’t. It’s really a book about faith. And how friendship transcends everything. More new feedback on Hillary and Bakke on the Letters Page.
The Dish 