 Washington, December 24, 2007
Leanne Pineau's son Kyle was 2 1/2 when he stopped speaking. Her son Jared, now 5, never said much more than "mama" and "dada".
They are autistic. But her youngest son, 2 1/2 year-old Bryce, is not. So Pineau and her husband, Mike, who live on the outskirts of Beavercreek, have wondered "Why do two sons face this while another escaped it?" They know the diagnosis. Now they want to know the cause.
The Pineaus, who are stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and 64 other Ohio families are involved in a research project spearheaded by Dr. Gail Herman, a clinical genticist with Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus.
Herman has, until new, operated the program on a shoestring budget. But now she's counting on a boost - Congress earlier this year passed a Defense Appropriations bill that includes a $1.5 million earmark for hear research.
Reps. David Hobson, R-Springfield, and Deborah Pryce, R-Upper Arlington, got the earmark on the bill.
"Autism is something we truly don't understand that well," Hobson said, explaining why he sought the earmark.
The money will go toward the development of a comprehensive registry of central Ohio and Wright-Patterson families with autism-spectrum disorders.
And Herman hopes she can use it to enroll even more families in the program.
"These families, they just need help," she said.
Shelli Mendel-Koeppl, who lives in off-base housing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, said she entered the research program in hopes of helping other families as well. Her son, Adam, 6, was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.
"There's always in back of mind, 'What went wrong?", she said. "Did I eat something wrong? Did I take the wrong thing, do the wrong thing...what happened?"
Answers, she hopes could help others. "It doesn't stop at your child", she said. "It continues."
Mendel-Koeppl is secretary of the Dayton chapter of the Autism Society of America. Its Web site is www.daytonautismsociety.org.
For Pineau, the project meant answering questions about her pregnancy, the environment, the circumstances in which her boys were born. Doctors also took blood from both parents.
Kyle Pineau, nearly 8, speaks, but can't hold a conversation. "He can't understand what, why or how kind of questions," she said.
Jared Pineau can't speak, but communicates through flash cards that show pictures of what he wants.
Leanne Pineau said she just wants to do what she can to help them.
"I'm honestly just hoping that it shows that it's a biological thing," she said. "And then maybe we can figure how - not to cure it, I don't see it as something that can be cured - but something to help us help our children along."
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