Journalist-Writer-Reporter. Story ideas and tips welcome!
“This Boy We Made” describes her relentless, twisting quest to understand the genetics of why the gentle, dancing toddler “Tophs,” with his chubby cheeks, comes to experience a maddening assortment of maladies and challenges over his young life. Some are benign, but some are serious — “the morning when he awoke but didn’t stir, in the haunting way that turns a real child into a doll,” as well as stimming (repetitive actions and movements), hypoglycemia (dangerously low blood sugar) and, perhaps most disconcerting, expressive speech delay and the associated difficulty communicating his wants and needs. The book details the intricacies of how the Harrises, including Tophs’s older sister, Eliot, and father, Paul, navigate the medical unknowns — along with some unexpected genetic findings — and how it all impacts the family psychologically and spiritually.
Read more at Washington Post.