DOCUMENTING CHANGE: MY LIFE AS A BLOGGER

Hello, my name’s Wade, and I’m a blogger. (All together now: Hi Wade.)

It started innocently enough. Not long after we got into the biomed side of the autism world, I started getting fascinated with the on-line world of the autism debates and found myself frequenting The Huffington Post. I don’t recall the exact post there when I got hooked, although I’d bet it was something by David Kirby. There was a mini-debate going on in the comments between these two doctors. One was a cancer surgeon, who called himself Orac, and he didn’t believe that anyone could be so foolish as to question the wisdom of the vaccine program. The other was a gentleman named Alan Clark, who was the father of an autistic child. In oddly different ways, they both inspired me, and I joined in the fray.

Dr. Clark was an amazing combination of intelligence, integrity, and grace. He had the courage to stand up to most of his profession, and unlike some of his peers, he actually used his own name. He inspired me to speak out, with civility. After reading what he had to say, I could not simply be a bystander, a mere reader of other’s words.

So speak out I did. It was all in the comments at The Huff Po at first. And inevitably, I began to tangle with Orac a bit. I got more curious about him, and I decided to check out his blog. I found that the guy was okay as a writer (at least for a doctor). Although he seemed like a nice enough fellow (and to be sure, we have had several civil, even nice exchanges through the years), he had an ego as big as an ocean, and would not (and will not) ever admit to being wrong. What I also found, was that people went to his site, read, and commented. I thought, “Damn, he can get people talking. I can do that.”

In very little time, I set up my own blog, deciding to give it the ever-so-clever name of Injecting Sense . Oh, and how clever I was . . . or at least I thought I was. The fact is, it started out being all about my ego. I was just an Orac on the other side of the coin.

But then came my third post ⎯ the one that made me realize I couldn’t just write; I had to actually have something to say. It was one of the shortest things I wrote in the years I’ve done the blog. I called it “Time Well Spent.” I described going out fishing with my then-15-year-old son (neurotypical) n a municipal pier on Lake Pontchartrain (we were then living in Mandeville, Louisiana, just across the lake from New Orleans). I saw a man walking along the pier with his obviously autistic little boy. I marveled at the lack of self-consciousness the man displayed, and it made me reflect on just how precious my little autistic child was (and still is):

"Having an autistic child is a gift Every day I get to celebrate progress that I took for granted with my older kids. The attention my son requires keeps him in the forefront of my consciousness every waking moment. He has made me a better parent to all of my children."

Just a few weeks later, Hurricane Katrina turned that pier into a few stray pieces of wood and metal poking up from the water. While the storm surge was doing its thing, I blogged from a hotel room in Texas, where we had evacuated.

Somewhere along the way, I realized what I was doing. I was documenting change. I wrote some about the changes in our lives, but mostly I wrote about the changes that were going on in the wider autism world ⎯ the changing attitudes and trends in the political and social controversies surrounding us. I wrote about the changes in my own attitudes and beliefs, including the ever-refining ideas I had about causation of the autism epidemic (of course, critics would say I was engaging in the moving of goalposts).

Occasionally, I wrote (usually in very general terms) about the changes I saw in my youngest son. My wife and I sometimes look back on the early advice we got when our son was first diagnosed. We were told the same things so many other parents were told: get him on Ritalin; put him in a special school; and get ready to institutionalize him in a few years. We ignored all of that advice, and instead started down the road that all those “experts” told us to avoid.

We tried “the diet,” and soon escalated to supplements, and eventually into chelation and detoxification. As a result, we now find ourselves unable to shut up our once-nonverbal child. He functions in a regular classroom, and generally does well. To be sure, we still have a lot of issues to address, but the change we have seen in him is truly remarkable, and goes well beyond what one would see through reliance on the “some children just get better” theory.

Our lives have changed in other ways as well. We moved to Illinois to build a better life for our young son, and make sure he gets all the help he needs. Our career paths have changed, our lifestyle has changed, and our outlook has changed.

Change is the constant in our lives. And often, change leads to hope. Hope is good.