Flop Bott

Miracle Drug


Last week I was offered a free book from a volunteer at the U of U hospital out of a supply of previously owned books kept on a roving bookcase.
particular called out in the way that they do, like a person on a street that you know you must get to know.

Happily I sat up in my hospital bed and reached for the bindings of the books, running my fingers along their backs looking for the “one” its title: Under The Eye Of The Clock by Christopher Nolan. He was born with cerebral palsy which caused him to be mute and quadripeligic. His mother described him as being: “gagged and in a straitjacket for life”. His parents saw his intelligence underneath his outward body and they nurtured it through songs, constant talking and unconditional love. Then after years of therapy and a miracle drug he was able to keep his spastic neck from going all over the place and with his mother holding his chin and forehead(And I thought pitching for hours to my son got old)with a rubber tipped pencil strapped to his noggin; he typed. 15 minutes and he could produce a single word! Despite the slow process the words flowed from his brain to paper in a poetic way I have never encountered. It opened up the pain and the thought process of those who have no voice.


He published at 15, 21 and around 30 something. . I could not believe that when I googled his name that he passed just this winter, in February. Ironically he was deprived of oxygyn once again and he passed on the 20th from food obstructed in the eating tube located at his neck.

Bono from the group U2 wrote a song about him in 2004. He was one of his classmates.
The song is entitled Miracle Drug.

His mother, Bernadette, said: "It doesn't matter whether you're in a wheel chair or a bed- it's what going on in your mind and your sould that is imortant."

Well, I don’t know what I would have done had I found out he was still alive, but I wish I could have thanked him. It’s a great read. Topping the hilarious book I read called: Born to Kyvetch. (Yiddish is apparently a language set aside solely for complaining!)

But I also turned to the book by Paulo Caulo: The Alchemist- which is a must read in your life time and easier to read than Christopher’s.

A couple of lines from Miracle Drug: “Freedom has the scent, the top of a newborn babies head. Beneath the below the din I hear your voice, its whispering. In science and in medicine I was a stranger and you took me in.”

I too am looking for the cure or a miracle drug for my infirmities, that pale in comparison to Nolan’s yet are wrenching in their own right. Good thing for the medicine of people’s stories.