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AUTISM
 

NAT SOUND FAMILY SINGING
“Happy Birthday to you, cha, cha cha, Happy birthday to you…”

NARRATOR
AT THE HOME OF THE HARTUNG FAMILY, EVERY YEAR IS FILLED WITH CELEBRATIONS AND EVERY DAY WITH CHALLENGES. TWO OF SUE AND GEORGE HARTUNG’S FOUR CHILDREN ARE AUTISTIC.

SUE HARTUNG
“It’s meant changing your dreams forever.”

Nat Sound from Birthday party
“This is from Grandpa, he’d like to be with you, but you know he is still in the hospital, ok.”

NARRATOR
AUTISM IS A VERY COMPLEX DISORDER. IT INTERFERES WITH A PERSON’S ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE AND INTERACT SOCIALLY. WARREN, AGE 14, IS EXTREMELY PASSIVE.

NAT SOUND FAMILY MEMBERS TALKING
“Brand new bathing suit… wow, wait a minute Warren, come here, get back here.”

SUSAN HARTUNG
“He was a severely challenged child. To this day he is completely, non-verbal. Some people say autism is like a train going by full speed, you’re listening to a train there is so much static, you can just tell, he just can’t hear you, he can’t process it. Other times, he is really clicking.”

Nat Sound Emily and Mom at computer
“What is that you’re painting? What is that a picture of? Beach. Beach?”

NARRATOR
EMILY AGE 9, HAS SOME LANGUAGE, BUT IS VERY HYPERACTIVE.

SUE HARTUNG.
 “We give Emily medication to help her sleep at night, but every once in a while it doesn’t work and she’ll do it all night, we’ll be hearing this all through the house at two, three o’clock in the morning (EMILY LAUGHS) It’s not funny. ”

NARRATOR
TO UNDERSTAND HOW ONE FAMILY COPES WITH THIS DISORDER…

Nat Sound – No, NO, No, No No No

… YOU MUST GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING WHEN WARREN WAS BORN.

SUE HARTUNG
“He wasn’t breathing well, they cleared his tubes, they whisked him away to neonatal intensive care unit. Within ten minutes, they said the baby’s doing fine. He’s, much, much better. The first three or four months, development was ok. Then he had his first DPT shot and he had very bad reaction. He was screaming, had a fever. He ran a fever for 48 hours. In retrospect, I don’t know what that means. And from that point on, his development was just slow. So I kept waiting for him to catch up, but he didn’t.”

GEORGE HARTUNG
“You see your whole life pass before you, and you feel so much for a child like that and the type of life their going to lead, and that sort of thing. It just rips the soul right out of you.”

NARRATOR
BY THE TIME WARREN WAS THREE, HE WAS DIAGNOSED AS AUTISTIC, AND THE HARTUNGS BEGAN THEIR JOURNEY DOWN A DIFFICULT PATH.
AT THE SAME TIME, SUE AND GEORGE DECIDED TO HAVE ANOTHER CHILD. THE CHANCE FOR REOCCURRENCE OF AUTISM THEY WERE TOLD, WAS NO GREATER THAN IN THE GENERAL POPULATION.

 SUE HARTUNG
 “Emily was the antithesis of Warren. She walked at 9 and a half months. She was babbling and saying “mama” and “dada”at a year. She was putting words together at 2 years. And then Emily just started getting weird. She stopped talking as much. The development, the language stopped, it just kind of stymied. And she started spinning around, started lining things up. It wasn’t horrible, but it was noticeable to me.
When I bought her back to the pediatrician that fall, he was shocked, all the doctors completely shocked.”

NARRATOR
EMILY WAS DIAGNOSED WITH DELAYED ONSET AUTISM.

SUSAN “ It’s tantruming, aggression. My daughter bites her hand when she is frustrated. She has calluses on her hands been there since she was three. The child needs to be watched for their own safety almost all time.”

NARRATOR
DURING THIS TIME, THEIR THIRD CHILD GRAHAM WAS BORN. WITH THREE CHILDREN, TWO AUTISTIC, SUE AND GEORGE WERE OVERWHELMED.

SUE HARTUNG
“The worst time of all of this though was when Emily was diagnosed. I must say that was the worst period of my life. I think there was a month I hardly talked. I think George and I hardly talked to anyone. I say I kind of went somewhere, just dealt with things and did what I needed to do and we got through it.”

NARRATOR
SUSAN AND GEORGE BECAME ADVOCATES FOR THEIR CHILDREN, FOR THEIR FAMILY. THREE YEARS AFTER GRAHAM, MATTHEW WAS BORN. SUE AND GEORGE TRY TO MAINTAIN AS NORMAL A FAMILY LIFE AS POSSIBLE.

Nat sound at family dinner table
 “Get this out of here, What’s the magic word? Please.”

GEORGE
 “We’ve all seen the statistics, 50-60% of l marriages with a child with special needs break up. I’ve learned so much about myself and who I am. I’ve become a lot more patient, a lot more understanding, a lot more tolerant of other people.”

Nat sound George talking
“What did you do Sweetie, Where’d you go? Did you go to gymnastics?”

GEORGE
“I know how to love to an extent that I never had before.”

NARRATOR
 GEORGE GAVE UP A PROMISING CAREER AS A BUSINESS EXECUTIVE TO MANAGE A LIQUOR STORE. BECAUSE IT MEANT HE COULD SET HIS HOURS AND HELP OUT MORE AT HOME. SUSAN HAS WORKED WITH THEIR EDUCATION.

Nat sound Emily at school
“O.K. Emily, let’s come up and build a sentence.”

NARRATOR
EMILY ATTENDS IVY MOUNT, A PRIVATE SCHOOL FOR DISABLED CHILDREN. TEACHER JO ANN PELLIGRINO

 JO ANN PELLIGRINO
 “Emily first came here when she was about three. She had had some language but was rapidly losing it so as you can imagine, she was a very frustrated little girl. Sometimes the situations got fairly dangerous, we had to restrain her physically. It was not until a long time of showing her visual cues, the pictures, some signing, and pairing them with an object we knew she wanted, and not letting her get it until she had made some sort of symbolic representation of handing the picture, touching the picture, that we were able to get through to her that this was a way she could communicate.”

Nat sound Warren at closet with teacher

NARRATOR
WARREN IS IN A SPECIAL CLASS AT A PUBLIC SCHOOL.

Nat Sound Warren and Teacher

NARRATOR
TEACHER RENEE DEVITT

RENEE DEVITT
 “Warren will always, always, always, I believe need someone to help him take care of his basic needs.”

Nat sound teacher and Warren
“Do you need help? Oh no you did it, you did it.”

RENEE DEVITT
“Warren would rather sit back and let everything happen around him and he would be perfectly, perfectly content.”

NARRATOR
BUT SUE AND GEORGE PUSH WARREN AND HIS TEACHERS TO HELP HIM ACHIEVE WHERE AND WHEN HE CAN.

Nat Sound Warren and Teacher at computer

RENEE DEVITT
“ He can be a very frustrating person to deal with, he could be, and having parents supporting you saying, ‘I know Warren can be a pain, but you know what else Warren likes, what we did?’ You really get to see Warren as a person.

NARRATOR
ALTHOUGH THE CAUSE OF AUTISM IS NOT KNOWN, IT HAS NOT STOPPED THE HARTUNGS FROM LOOKING FOR A CURE. A TV STORY ABOUT THE HORMONE SECRETIN GAVE THEM HOPE. SECRETIN (si kree‘ tin) IS NORMALLY USED FOR DIAGNOSTIC TESTING OF GASTRO-INTESTINAL PROBLEMS, NOT FOR AUTISM.

THE HARTUNGS HAD TO FIND A DOCTOR WILLING TO PRESCRIBE IT. THEY LEARNED TO ADMINISTER IT THROUGH THE SKIN FROM ANOTHER DOCTOR WITH INSTRUCTIONS OVER THE WORLD WIDE WEB. IT IS CONTROVERSIAL.

SUE
“We didn’t want to wait for trials. We did want to be in a study where we might get a placebo. We heard one doctor on TV say, “If this is really so good, they can wait a year.’ He doesn’t live in my house, I can’t wait a year. Emily has made more language gains this year more than she has probably in the last three put together. The other day when I couldn’t understand something she was trying to tell me, she picked up a pen and paper and it was like hello was what she was saying, and was what she was trying to say was Hercules and she couldn’t say it. But she wrote the letter H and gave it to me, I mean, that’s just a quantum leap.

 NARRATOR
TONIGHT, WARREN CANNOT FALL ASLEEP. SUE AND GEORGE GIVE HIM SECRETIN WHILE HE IS AWAKE. WARREN’S ANTICONVULSANT MEDICINE MAY DIMINISH THE FULL EFFECT OF THE TREATMENT, NONETHELESS, THE HARTUNGS SEE A DIFFERENCE.

SUE HARTUNG
“We think he is calmer and more focused. His G-I (gastro-intestinal) problems are not cured, but they are much better.”

NARRATOR
WHAT SCARES SUE AND GEORGE IS NOT ONLY THE PRESENT, BUT THE FUTURE.

GEORGE
“What would happen to Warren and Emily if something happened to Sue or me.”

SUE
“Warren and Emily are not easy people to love. They could never be independent with people who would really care about them, who wouldn’t view this as a job and as a struggle.”

NAT SOUND - GEORGE SINGING “Old Man River…”

GEORGE HARTUNG
“I have a promise with Warren, that after we leave this veil we’re going to travel the galaxies together and we’re going to look at all the stars and solar system and everything out there. So when we’re both in the next level of existence, he’s going to be my traveling mate throughout eternity.”

SONG CONTINUES

NARRATOR
BETTY VAN ETTEN VOA-TV
 

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