ne month before his 18th birthday, my son Wolf was thrilled to receive invitations from galleries in Melbourne and New York City to exhibit his paintings of mythical creatures, herbivores, aliens, religious imagery, and cities destroyed by solar flares. The bad news is that the showings are scheduled for the summer of 2013. Wolf may not be alive then. At least according to the call I received from one of his doctors, suggesting that he and I begin sessions with an end-of-life grief counselor.
Wolf was born with a microdeletion in his 22nd chromosome. The resulting medical conditions have rippled out into ever-expanding rings of pain; each attempt to fix one problem results in another. The more tests and treatments and medicines he is prescribed, the sicker he gets. The sicker he gets, the more tests and treatments and medicines he is prescribed.
At various points in his life, Wolf has been diagnosed as schizoaffective, bipolar, ADD, OCD, and ODD, and he’s also been undiagnosed with these disorders. Finally, the doctors settled on NOS—“not otherwise specified.” The US Department of Health claims that 20 percent of Americans are mentally ill, and even questioning authority is considered by some to be a disorder. If you fell into their diagnosing hands, who knows what they would find? Wolf has never had a break from his diagnosers.