On Thursday, November 14th, I was a lucky member of an intimate audience, marveling, crying and cheering during the world premiere of Joint Attention the first play  ever to tackle the issue of vaccines causing autism.  Not an easy topic in real life, I wondered how it would ever do as a play, while I skeptically drove from suburban Chicago to Sheridan Road on the cold, lake front. 

My best friend since age 7, Sue, a witness to the devastating health effects my daughter Megan has endured since vaccinations and regressive autism, accompanied me.  We both thought there was no way any play could capture how “a young couple struggles with their son’s autism diagnosis.”  It turns out, we were so wrong.  

Pat Curtis, the author of this play, “Joint Attention,” did an exquisite job showing us the effects of

Pat Curtis and Teresa Conrick

an autism diagnosis while the actors, music and directing were brilliant, bringing it to life.  But Pat did more than simply show what it looks like on the outside.  She took us into the home of Claire and David, whose precious son had begun to regress.  He had stopped having joint attention, lost eye contact, begun to scream, had diarrhea, was barely eating, developed rashes and - stopped talking -  the regression that is increasingly part of an autism diagnosis.  We are to hear from David that it was after vaccines, “many” in one day at fifteen months that his son changed and became ill.

 Thimerosal, the vaccine mercury, a known neurotoxin and immune system monster, was a prime culprit. It was then that I realized I had forgotten to bring tissues. This familiar and horrific event happened to my own daughter eighteen years ago and it keeps happening still.  Life and fiction, both strange yet real.

Pat then takes us into the hope and fear.  David has hope.  He reads on the internet about biomedical treatments and even finds a doctor who medically treats children with an autism diagnosis.  He and Claire start the usual early interventions like, Speech and OT but it is the ABA and biomed, the diet, the vitamins and supplements, the probiotics, the hyperbaric oxygen, the detoxing and glutathione that brings back the eye contact, and begins to heal their child.  Claire though, is fearful and her fear erupts into doubt, doubt about biomedical treatments and an allegiance to her pediatrician who denies the vaccine connection and subsequent success with biomed treatments.  For those of us in the trenches of ill children diagnosed with DSM autism, this is our lives.