Losing Cameron

In March of 1997, my sister, Fran, and I took our children to a photography studio in downtown Winston-Salem, N.C. I had my twin girls, who were eight weeks old at the time. Fran had Cameron, a grinning nine month old with curly red hair and startling green eyes. I'll never forget how Cameron looked that morning, giggling as he clapped his stubby fingers together for the photographer. I'll never forget the expression on my sisters' face as she watched Cameron with pride from the rear of the small, cluttered studio. It would be a long time before I saw that look again. Less than twelve weeks later, Cameron suffered a thirty-minute seizure that terrified my family and baffled doctors in the emergency room of a Greensboro, N.C. hospital. Cameron was never the same. Two years later, he was diagnosed with autism, joining a group of some 500,000 other children and adults in this country living with the neurological disorder. The diagnosis has shattered my family. This is our story.