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It's 1982. My wife Valerie was pregnant with our first and only child. She took excellent care of herself during the entire pregnancy. She doesn't smoke or drink alcohol. She avoided all medications except for one Tylenol. Nevertheless, we still prayed each and every day that everything would be fine.

We took pre-natal classes, and I had learned about the APGAR (Activity; Pulse; Grimace; Appearance; Respiration) score, a two-part evaluation of the baby. The evaluation is done twice, once immediately after birth and again just a few minutes later, and is supposedly a strong indicator as to the overall health of the newborn. Each of five factors is given a score of 0, 1, or 2, so the total score could range from 0-10.

We were told that a score of six or higher for the first evaluation and eight or higher for the second evaluation was usually a good sign. With this in mind, the minute Kurt Junior entered the outside world, I immediately focused on "six and eight." I asked one of the nurses what the APGAR scores were. Her reply was, "Nine to ten; can't get much better than that." At that moment, everything was right with the universe, and my world seemed totally secure.

Little Kurt seemed to be perfect. With a birth weight of nine pounds, 10½ ounces, he had a head start on most babies. He turned over, crawled and walked much earlier than expected. Everything seemed to be going along just fine.

It was around his first birthday that we started to think things weren't quite right. It seemed that Kurt wasn't listening to us. Even if we said something like, "Kurt, if you come here you can have some ice cream (his favorite)," he failed to respond. Frightful that Kurt had a possible hearing loss, we scheduled a hearing test.

What a disaster, Kurt would not sit still and wouldn't even let the audiologist put headphones on him. The audiologist told us after the aborted test that he didn't think Kurt had a hearing problem because he responded to the noises. He recommended that we see a neurologist, but refused to elaborate why.

When we went to see the neurologist one week later, our world started to crumble. He diagnosed Kurt with mental retardation. Valerie and I were devastated, but almost immediately turned our attention to getting Kurt whatever help he needed so he could lead as normal and productive a life as possible. After all, Valerie's brother is mentally retarded and he is living a full life, complete with a full time job as a messenger and a wife.

Valerie and I decided to turn our pain, hurt and anger into action. As soon as we could, we got Kurt enrolled in a special education pre-school program, as well as an excellent recreation program on Saturdays.

As Kurt started getting older, however, his behavior changed drastically for the worse. He would become extremely agitated and angry, sometimes for no reason at all, other times if just one minor thing was changed. One example was the day we moved some furniture in the living room. When Kurt saw that the furniture's position changed, he started to continually bang the table with his fists. When we took Kurt to a specialist, he diagnosed Kurt with autism in addition to the mental retardation. The autism explained why Kurt would get so upset over the slightest of changes.

The aggressive behavior kept escalating. Kurt started throwing objects like chairs, and was becoming violent towards himself and us. He also began a pattern of sleeping only two-to-three hours a night, every night. Valerie and I had to take shifts sleeping because anything could happen when Kurt was awake.

One minute he'd be laughing hysterically for no reason and the next start kicking and biting. It was around this time that a 3rd diagnosis was added to the mix: bipolar disorder. This would explain Kurt's rapid mood swings. The doctor started Kurt on psychiatric medications, and, although he was only six at the time, doses were raised to 300mg of Elavil and 400mg of Mellaril.

Even at high doses of medication, we saw not one change in Kurt. The behaviors were exactly the same, and he was still sleeping only two to three hours every night. The doctor then, over the course of many months, proceeded to try another six or so different medications, such as Ritalin and Tegretol, each also having no positive effects at all.

When Kurt was about seven, Valerie and I made the painful decision to find him a good group home where he could be monitored much more closely than Valerie or I were able to. Plus, the increasing violence was becoming too dangerous for us to handle alone.

We obtained a list of about 20 group homes and contacted them all. Over the next two years only six of them indicated they might have an opening. We visited all six of them, some hundreds of miles away and in different states, but not a single one would accept him. The answer we got was: "Kurt is just too violent and aggressive for our program," or "We just don't have the adequate staff to meet Kurt's special needs." I would ask them if they knew of other group homes that might accept Kurt, but they did not.

One visit to a potential group home stands out in my mind. This particular group home was about 300 miles away. By the time we got there Kurt was extremely agitated and proceeded to slap the face of the person interviewing us. It took about five hours to drive there, five minutes to realize Kurt wouldn't be accepted, and another five hours to drive back home.