Alex

My boyfriend, Alex, is incredibly sick. He loves literature and math.  He loves traveling and music. He loves science and baseball and football and eating out and telling jokes. He is brilliant and funny as hell…and everyone’s favorite person. And now all he can do is lay in bed and scream. 

Happy to say that periodically he gets well so we know he is still in there.  But then he tanks again…and my heart breaks again. 

His mom, Judy, has tried to help him:  I think she has done more to try to help him than anyone ever has. At last count she has taken him to over 50 doctors in the 4 ½ years since he got sick. And yet he still is in bed, as I write this. And he is down about 75 pounds in the past 18 months. Most days he won’t eat now. And that is terrifying.

I know, realistically, that his illness is complicated. But it absolutely should have been diagnosed by now. I have to believe that it’s taken so long because so many doctors see autism as the cause of illness, rather than the result. But autism doesn’t cause anything.

Alex needs to get well. Judy asks for help every day because she always says she’s not too proud to beg.
Neither am I.