from the Boston Globe
Flutie family faces challenge of autism
By Jackie MacMullan, Globe Staff | July 24, 2005
NATICK — This time there are no boxes, no moving vans, no harried coast-to-coast transports of the dogs, the kids, the stuff.
Doug Flutie is home. His new job, backup quarterback for the New England Patriots, enables his daughter, Alexa, to complete her senior year of high school alongside her lifelong friends — not to mention cousins — from Natick. It allows his son, Dougie, to sleep in the same room all year, with his toy box and his hockey stick and his big old bear.
Dougie is 13 now. He loves music and the ocean. Sometimes, when the family is at the beach, he’ll bolt toward the water without warning, and Doug will have to chase him down. Dougie will hear his father coming, his steely legs frantically pounding the sand in pursuit, and he’ll wheel around and smile. You know what he’d be saying if he could talk: Gotcha, Dad.
He loves it when his mother, Laurie Flutie, plays the ”Hey” song. When he was 2, before autism overtook him, he would croon right along with her. You know the tune. It’s ”What I Like About You” by the Romantics. When they sang, ”You really know how to dance,” Dougie would bust a move, smiling and laughing, like always.
Dougie doesn’t dance so much anymore. He often sits in his stroller, a state-of-the-art contraption that helps contain him and provide comfort from the swirl of life’s activity that is, at times, just too overwhelming. He has a habit of drifting off to his own place, where nobody — not his mother, his father, his sister, or a team of top-flight physicians — can penetrate.
Autism is heartbreaking that way. One minute, your son is smiling at you, and the next, he is looking right through you.
”He’s always looking away,” said Doug Flutie, wistfully. ”You wonder what he’s thinking.”
But his parents believe Dougie is happy. He doesn’t know he’s autistic, doesn’t notice when others gawk at him when he’s shouting, or chewing on a plastic bottle, or twirling objects again and again and again. Some people stare, others recoil. His parents have long ago accepted that.
The rest of the world simply does not see the Dougie they see.
”People ask me how he’s doing,” Doug Flutie said. ”It’s not that he’s doing any one specific skill. It’s little things. He follows directions better. He gets in and out of the car by himself. That’s a huge improvement. Before that, it used to be a procedure.”
Here is one of the most celebrated athletes in New England sports history, a Heisman Trophy winner who married his high school sweetheart in a storybook wedding. The Fluties were millionaires by the time Doug was 25, yet his own son, his namesake, can’t even begin to carry on the legacy. It’s likely Dougie will never read or write. He will never be able to take care of himself. He probably will never speak. The Random House Dictionary defines autism as a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by impaired communication, excessive rigidity, and emotional detachment.
srticle continues at link:
http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/articles/2005/07/24/true_measure_of_qbs_heart_found_at_home/