Day Three

Today I slept in. Today I painted my toenails. Today I wrote three pages, finishing a chapter. Today I--most shocking of all--took a nap.

Freakish things like this just *don't* happen in my world. Ever.

Nick had a good day. A wonderfully uneventful day spent playing, sitting up against mom on the couch, reading books, and eating.

Ahhh.

Nick is calmer, more content. But he's still Nick. Retaining his "Nickness" is something I was thinking a lot about today when I was writing. I was working on a passage about Ari Ne’eman and the rhetoric of war in the autism debate. On one side we have Ne'eman speaking of his concern that "curing" autism is a form of genocide, and on the other side we have Jenny McCarthy and Autism Speaks waging war on autism. I know that by choosing to medicate Nicholas that I've jumped into a battlefield.


I don't want to erase who Nicholas is. His autism is part of him and it has a unique beauty. I love the way he gets things he's interested in right in front of his eyes and deeply examines them. I love that he wants to drink in every sensory experience far more deeply than most of us ever imagined possible.


But I also like that during the past two days it's been my eyes that he's been drawing close to his and absorbing every minute detail. I like that he'll squeeze me to get the sensory input that he needs, but not squeeze so hard that it hurts.  


Ne'eman says we should focus on quality of life instead of cure, and I hoping my choices will do just that for Nick, give him the quality of life he deserves.