NOS (disorder, not otherwise specified) is a journey of two writers who become lovers who become parents of a special needs daughter. Their experience fumbling toward understanding reveals a medical establishment strangely at odds with understanding. Their journey unpins the ground beneath themas' diagnosis, as treatment, as daily living, as language releasing both ferocity and empathy on a scale unimagined by either party. Necessarily hybrid, NOS is a mixed-form narrative about autism and parenting, that's also a document of trauma. In the extreme present of living a life not otherwise specified, the authors give both voice and shape to the complex journey of a family--not just one child--living with autism.

From the authors:

The etiology of autism involves the study of factors arrayed like suns in the code of spectrum. Many lights and no system. During the first five years of our daughterÕs life, we spent cumulative months in hospitals, doctor's offices, emergency rooms, psychiatric wards, therapy clinics, and laboratories. Medical encounters became existential tremors. But the other side of disorder is advocacy, and NOS (disorder, not otherwise specified) documents.