A mother decides to give her son Wolf, a talented artist who suffers from a range of ailments, autonomy over his own life:
“The day after Wolf’s 18th birthday, I asked, ‘What do you want?’ I don’t think anyone had ever asked him this before.
“‘I want friends,’ he answered. ‘I don’t have any friends because there’s always doctors and aides. I don’t know how to have friends, but I want to try.’
“‘Do you want to fire some doctors?’
“‘Can I do that?’
“‘It’s your life.’
“He was shocked.
“Within a week he had fired two of his three therapists and his yoga instructor (who is great and had been giving him lessons for 13 years—only no one had noticed that for the past year or two, he’s hated it), and he informed his hormone-therapy doctor that he would only be coming in for blood tests every other month. He tore down the stop, wolf! sign stuck to the refrigerator door with a magnet and ripped up his behavior chart and his appointment calendar. He tried to convince his psychiatrist to cut down on his mood stabilizers. (The psychiatrist said no.) I found someone to take Wolf to church. He woke up early for it, happy to have a reason to put on a collared shirt. He also started lifting weights. He says he’s ‘working on his abs.’”
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