Pietro Andres thought he”™d follow in his father”™s footsteps and carve out a career in medical research, moving to San Francisco to join a research laboratory after a three-year fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. “Both my parents were doctors,” he said. His mother was a radiologist and his father was trained for internal medicine but was recruited from his native Italy to do basic research at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
“We came to the United States when I was 4 and settled in Buffalo,” Andres said. From there, his career story follows a familiar pattern ”“ graduated from high school in 1984 and from Maine”™s Bowdoin College four years later, then from Harvard Medical School in 1993. “I took a year off between years two and three to work in a laboratory at Brigham and Women”™s Hospital” in Boston, he said. “I decided to go into internal medicine and did my internship and residency at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, also a part of Harvard.”
Along the way “and for a couple of reasons, I decided I wanted to do gastroenterology,” ending an internal debate between it and cardiology. Cardiology dealt with the heart, but gastroenterology dealt with the stomach, colon, liver, pancreas, small intestine and esophagus ”“ all part of the digestive track. “In addition,” he said cheerfully, “you get to do procedures ”“ endoscopies and colonoscopies. It”™s actually fun to use your hands. It”™s almost like surgery, but not as involved.”
That meant another three years of study, this time at Massachusetts General Hospital ”“ also a part of Harvard ”“ on a research-oriented fellowship, which he completed in 1999. He and his wife, Kristine, moved to San Francisco where he began working at a medical lab and where their daughter was born in 2000 and their son in 2002. Things were going well, and Andres was being recruited to start his own laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania to conduct research into inflammatory bowel disease. That”™s about when he and Kristine began to notice worrisome symptoms in their son.
In December of 2003, they took their son ”“ Andres requested his name not be printed ”“ to their pediatrician, “worrying about some of the things we saw” when he was about 18 months old, Andes said. Within a month and after some examinations they were told their son was autistic. “It was devastating,” he said. “I remember going to my work early and sobbing. It was the worst period of my life.”
Reaching more people
“After two or three months we were able to come to grips with it,” Andres said of their son”™s autism. “We got into the mode that, OK, this is it, this is what we have to deal with. It was a matter of getting on and getting stuff done.”
Their first decision was to pass up the University of Pennsylvania laboratory opportunity and move to Connecticut. “I was very lucky in that a good friend of mine from residency was working here and had been in touch with me. It turns out one of his partners was retiring,” and Andres was invited to join the practice. “And my wife had two sisters in Connecticut, in Wilton and Newtown.”
Another benefit of the move was that Connecticut”™s state services to autistic children are better than those offered in California. “When we came here our son was 2, and the state provides services to children before the age of 3,” he said. “Our service provider was the Kennedy Center” in Trumbull. Their son was involved with the center until he was transitioned to the public school system at age 3 “and the town of Fairfield took over his care.”
The Andres”™ “started spending a fair amount of money to give him private speech and behavioral therapy to help him,” he said. And once the therapy bills began mounting, “we began thinking abut how people who make less money do this. We”™re talking thousands of dollars. People often spend upwards of $50,000 a year for their kids. That”™s a lot of money. If you want to intervene early, you”™re forced to spend all this money because it”™s got to be done now. The longer you wait, the less responsive they may be to therapy.”
Their son began therapy when he was 20 months old. “We”™ve been fortunate,” Andres said. “We diagnosed him early and he”™s responded well, and he”™s in kindergarten with regular kids.” But “he”™ll always be autistic. It”™s the way the brain works; the brain is hardwired differently. We have to teach a lot of the things kids pick up intuitively from social interaction, like you don”™t kick people or you don”™t bite people.”
Andres”™ gastroenterology practice provided enough of a financial cushion for the couple to invest in therapy for their son. “My wife and I wondered how we could help,” he said, until they discovered the nonprofit Kennedy Center “had been thinking about developing an autism project. We had thought about a grant program for low-income families, but The Kennedy Center helped us realize there are a number of ways to help more broadly and reach more people.”
Scholarship program
Autistic children “have several features, one of which is difficulty in social interaction that can manifest as an inability to maintain eye contact,” Andres said. Other features include “staying secluded in a corner, playing by themselves in a group of parents and kids. Sometimes they can enter their own little world. You can make a big noise next to them and it”™s as if they didn”™t hear you.”
Another set of criteria includes difficulty with communication in a broad sense, he said. “As they get older and depending on their level, they may have problems reading and speaking. I”™ve seen kids who are completely nonverbal, others who have trouble putting words together. It”™s a spectrum.”
Other features include repetitive motions like hand slapping in some children. Some “will take their arms up with limp wrists and run around on the tip of their toes when they get excited,” he said. “Once you see it, you know what it is.”
The cause of autism is unknown, but what is known is that it”™s on the rise. “Over the past 15 years, it”™s been going up dramatically so that now one in 160 children will be on the autism spectrum,” he said, adding that boys are more likely than girls to be affected. “There are a whole bunch of theories, but there should be a ton more research.”
Short of that, Andres and his wife became involved with the Kennedy Center”™s autism project, organizing a fundraising event last year that raised $120,000 for the program. “It took us a year-and-a-half to organize it,” he said. Just fewer than 400 people attended the event. “We used the Kennedy Center data base to send out invitations and sent out information through local autism Web sites. We did everything we could to find people to support us.”
This year”™s fundraising is March 30 at the Quick Center for the Arts at Fairfiield University. Tickets are $200 for a high-end wine tasting, and $125 for just the main event Tickets can be printed off the Kennedy Center Web site (www.thekennedycenterinc.org). “Our goal is to raise money,” Andes said. “We set up a scholarship system that people with low incomes can apply for. I hope we can get this to a point where we can put it into a foundation to accrue interest. We”™re not there yet. Right now we”™re using all the funds we get.”
