Katherine was a beautiful, perfect baby for the first year ofher life. Then, without warning, she changed forever. She startedcrossing her eyes. She cried at night for hours at a time and couldnot be soothed. She stopped saying words, stopped crawling, andbegan what would become a lifelong habit of wringing her hands.Hospital visits and consultations with doctors offered no answersto the mystery. Soon Katherine slipped away to a place her motherand father could never reach. In Keeping Katherine, Susan Zimmermann tells the story of herlife with her daughter Katherine, who has Rett syndrome, adevastating neurological disorder. Writing with honesty and candor,Zimmermann chronicles her personal journey to accept the changeddynamic of her family; the strain of caring for a special needschild and the pressure it placed on her marriage, career, andrelationship with her parents; the dilemma of whether Kat would bebetter cared for in a group home; and most important, the alteredreality of her daughter’s
