The Most Difficult Decision of My Life

ASIA KEPKA FOR TIME

Nate hugs a big blue ball with his teacher, Heather, on the campus of the Higashi school in Randolph, Massachusetts.

When my 47-year-old husband Fred lay dying in a hospital from a heart attack, I sobbed to my brother, "He can't die. Who will give Nate his shots?" Nate was our autistic son, then 5, and the injections were one of the myriad can't-miss cures we had tried in order to help him.

My husband died that night seven years ago, and I felt it was the end of the world for me, for our newly adopted 10-week-old son Joey and, most of all, for Nate, whose strongest connection was to Fred.

I learned to inject Nate. And when I decided...

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