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I have a friend who had the same thing happen. His kid got the MMR vaccine at 18 months, suddenly got sick, and then went silent. Went from being gregarious and talking to full-blown severe autism. When he told me about it, he had not heard of any correllation between the shots and the autism, but mentioned to me that he had been wondering about it because the timing was so dead-on. I googled it and found stories all over the place of the same thing, so I let him know.
The thing is, I understand that there is no scientific proof yet. What bothered me so much and why I delayed letting my sons get the MMR was that the whole point of a vaccine is to avoid problems, not create new, life-crippling problems. Doctors I talked to dismissed it immediately, and seemed to have a chip on their shoulders about it.
I finally decided I'd rather risk a dangerous disease than to get the shot while they are still so young and always blame myself if something happened. This basically meant getting the shot at 3 instead of at 1, and by then they had removed the thimerisol (mercury) binding agent. My youngest will get the shot next year just before his 4th birthday. I have to admit being a little uneasy about it already.
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