The Bedside Manner of a Mushroom Cloud

Our first son was born and we could not have been happier. He was beautiful, funny, full of farts and poop and as far as we knew as healthy as a bull. He was the first grandchild for my parents too, so needless to say they went a little bit nuts. Controlling, guiltifying and overbearingly Jewish grandparent nuts! But we knew it was all out of love so we went along for the ride.

I was playing drums in a few bands at the time, and one in particular was starting to do pretty well. We had just put a record out and were about to launch our first small tour of the UK. It wasn’t easy for me by a long shot, but I looked into the eyes of my new son a realized my touring days were over. Drums had shown me a lot of the world, but they had nothing more to show me now that even came close to competing with my little boy’s smile.

Fortunately the singer-songwriter of the band was very supportive. He was an old friend and kicked me in the ass to keep writing my own songs and start doing my own music. I was jealous of my replacement or course (like of an ex-girlfriend), but he was a really nice guy too and the band had to keep on moving forward with or without me.

I had a decent day job at the time at a well known record label, and the benefits were good. I wrote more songs, changed diapers and basically did not sleep for a year. A few months later my wife began to notice that she was very tired. More than a new parent should be that is. So we went to the doctor to see what was up.

After listening to her describe what was going on the doctor suggested she should get some more rest and start taking acid reflux medication. Really? Wow. That’s just genius! If overtired, get some rest! Medical degree champion #1!!! You might say we were less than pleased with the half assed diagnoses.

After many sleepless nights she was not feeling any better at all, so we went to another doctor who actually performed some tests! (Who knew they could actually do that?) Turns out she had every right to be more tired than me. She was pregnant! We being the smart folks we were had decided to listen to the old wives tale that you can’t get pregnant while you are nursing. Here’s a little tip just in case you are wondering…YOU CAN!

We were broke, but we were happy. We always used to say that we lived on love. My oldest son’s first word was “Cool”. What could have been better than that? Not the typical yuppie “Mommy” or “Daddy”. “Cool”! I was so proud of my little man. He did everything early. At nine months old he was running and climbing all over the furniture. Have you ever seen a nine month old? He was TINY!!! But there he was running around the room and dashing underneath the dining room table with plenty of headspace cleared above him.

He loved his little brother when he showed up too. I will never forget the huge smile on his face when we brought him into the recovery room. It was almost as big as the shark tank smile. But that would come later.

One day we noticed out of the blue he stopped saying “cool”. He stopped turning his head when you called his name. He would grab a few toy cars and sit in the corner trying to figure out how they were made. He wouldn’t roll them around on the ground and make engine noises like all the other kids. He would put the bottom of the car right up to his nose and squint his eyes tight almost as if he were trying to see inside of the plastic. He would put the car on its roof and slide it up a table leg and follow it with his face tracing whatever other straight lines he could find.

He stared not sleeping. I mean really not sleeping. Like he was only getting fifteen minutes of sleep a night not sleeping. I don’t know how we survived it, but my wife and I traded a few hours of duty by sleeping and staying up with him for close to three years. We definitely were the grumpiest family on the West Side. And that says a lot! I am sure our neighbors just loved us.

All this time our Pediatrician would say things like, “Oh Einstein didn’t talk until he was five” And “Just be patient. You guys just worry too much.” Nothing like being told you are stupid, pain in the ass, overbearing parents by a medical professional when you haven’t slept a full night in almost five years. It was spectacular some of the profanity filled conversations we used to have riding home from those appointments. I would share them, but there may be a child reading this somewhere.

So to get him as sleepy as possible we used to take him to the playground at the Westside Pavilion and let him run for hours and hours until they kicked us out. One of the fun things was that he LOVED bare feet, especially with painted toenails. If you have ever met a yuppie socialite L.A. Westside Mom, you will know that they love to show off their freshly pedicured feet. Needless to say, it was an open invitation for our little guy to invade these unsuspecting ladies’ personal spaces and put the bottom of their feet right up against his mouth. All we had to do was listen for the screams and we would know it was time to grab him up and move on to the next freshly fetid foot fetish victim. Fortunately we went there often enough that security knew us and pretty much took our side all of the time. We didn’t get arrested anyway, so that was good.

One day my wife struck up a conversation with another mom who suggested that we have our son’s hearing checked. So we made an appointment with an audiologist and set off to see what kind of drops or medication to use that would help him start talking again. They put him on my lap in a soundproof room and turned on the lights over a stuffed bear to his left. He looked at it and smiled. Then they did the same on his right. Once again he looked and smiled. Then they lit both and only had a fun sound come from the left. He responded appropriately. All appeared to be going smoothly. When we were finished with the testing the technician sat us down in his office room and told us his hearing was fine. But he had a strange look on his face and almost reflexively backed away from an invisible gunshot.

“Have you ever had him tested for Autism?”

Screeching tires, suitcases falling down the stairs, mushroom clouds over Santa Monica, Superman flying fast enough to get the Earth to spin backwards…What the fuck? How dare he tell us that our perfect little boy had autism! That’s just coo coo for coco puffs! No way!

Wait…what is autism again?

After the yelling, screaming and tears all died down at home we decided we were going to get a second opinion. I mean, he’s just a little quiet and doesn’t like playing with other kids. That’s not so odd right? He’s only an audiologist, what does he know about autism?

We waited in the lobby of the Westside Regional Center and my wife filled out paperwork while I held my son up to look at the fish tank. I kept repeating “fish” over and over again in his ear while he just smiled and tried to get out of my grip so that he could attack the maze covered balls on the wall. After what seemed like an unbearable amount of “waiting room time” (which I have discovered is a very different kind of time than regular time which I think should win me the Nobel Prize for time definition or something right up there with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and stuff) the doctor finally came in and brought us into an office keenly disguised as a “play room”. I could tell because of the red rubber ball in the corner.

Instantly there was an air of Kim Jong Il or Mussolini to this woman. She was in charge and I really don’t think that she ever smiled. Ever. I mean, her facial muscles did not work that way. In other words, this was not a doctor with a good bedside manner. (Catching a theme here maybe?) After flipping through previous test results provided by our pediatrician and UCLA, she spent all of five minutes with my son.

She called his name twice and he did not look at her. She held up some pictures for him to look at but the pattern of the carpet was much more interesting. She gave him a toy car which he promptly dropped on the floor and started chewing on the wooden alphabet block hiding under my chair.

“He is going to play with one of my assistants while we speak in the other room.” She barked in a monotone voice as she high stepped it through the door and left us assuming we were following. We looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and tentatively followed her down the hall.

My wife and I took the two real fake leather chairs next to her desk while she sat behind and instantly said, “Yeah. He’s autistic.” I stopped breathing and the only sound I could hear was my wife crying. The doctor started to pass paperwork over the desk without skipping a beat somehow missing or not caring that with three small words she had overturned our entire world. Oh yeah, did I mention my wife had a job interview less that an hour later? No pressure. (How she was able to pull herself together for that I will never know. P.S. She got that job too!)

Twenty years ago a diagnoses of autism meant a life in institutions. It meant Dickensian and morbid treatment by doctors, educators and everyone else you ever came across. It meant a life stolen and only partially lived. No real human interaction. No first dates. No hugs or kisses. No children/grandchildren. Seven years later we were not too far ahead of that old way of thinking. There may have still been a few places left that applied leeches, but I don’t think they did that in our town anymore since the 1970’s.

Now that we had an official diagnoses we were completely depressed and terrified. So we did what any responsible parent would do, we went to the bookstore and bought about three hundred and twenty seven books. Books on treatments. Books with personal stories. Books on differing diagnoses and even “The Completely Terrified and Sad Because Your Entire Future Has Just Been Turned Inside Out Idiot Parents Guide to Autism”. Then we took them home, laid them all out on the floor and stared at the covers while she drank a bottle of vodka and I had my own special bottle of bourbon. To this day I still don’t think either of us has actually read any of those books beyond the introductions. Believe it or not, it’s still too painful.

A week or so later we went to see our Pediatrician again to set up our new plan of attack! We were gonzo! We were itching for a fight! We were going to meet this autism thing head on and crush it! Do you smell what the daddy is cookin’? I digress…

We sat down with the doctor and as we talked about autism and the future my wife and I both fell apart. We were raw nerves covered in pudding at this point. I think I frightened the doctor with the volume of my sobbing and the sheer amount of snot dripping down my nose. It must have been impressive to freak out a pediatrician with too much noise and nose fruit.

Now I have to believe the doctor meant well by what he said next. As a member of the same genus and species I have to trust that he was attempting to be kind and supportive when he leaned forward, took my wife by the hand and said, “You just have to mourn now. Most people get to wait until the teenage years. You just have to mourn the loss of your perfect child now.”



I have never wanted to punch someone in the face more in my entire life.



The loss of my perfect child? He wasn’t lost. He was sitting right there on my lap. Just because he wasn’t like every other kid in the room didn’t mean he deserved less of a shot at happiness. It didn’t mean that he wasn’t perfect just as is. It sure as hell didn’t mean that I didn’t love him so much it hurt.

Besides, “typical” kids are tougher to deal with right? Over the years I would see my friends with their kids and I would be so confused when they felt sorry for us. When they offered us some help. I wasn’t the one with the frazzled and frayed hair mustard stains on my shirt out of breath trying to answer the phone and drive to soccer practice kids beating each other to death in the backseat. I, on the other hand was the shaven head unwashed shirt toys in the driveway mismatched socks rushing from OT to PT to the neurologist speeding ticket taking late rent paying alternative therapy seeking calmer downer of a screaming child who can’t tell you what’s bothering him because he can’t talk dad.

Guess the grass was always greener.

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