Click here for events worldwide.
Click here to see photos of prominent buildings all over the world Light It Up Blue! Absolutely stunning.
Children with autism and their families have made a huge impact on my life. To all of you, THANK YOU. You inspire me.
Below are some photos that are especially meaningful to me:
Meeting Temple Grandin!
Blue balloons at a collaborative preschool I work at.
Camp Winston, where it all began.
Some great friends and self-advocates.And last but not least... I am selling printed T-shirts (design below!) to raise money for the 2011 Walk Now for Autism! Min. donation is $12 per shirt. Please contact me if you are interested.
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Hi Cordelia,
ReplyDeleteAnother perspective that people often forget to see is how they go about providing financial support for kids with autism.
Here is a link from a mother stating how a change in insurance policy from President Obama health care reform has benefited them.
"My son was diagnosed with autism at 18 months of age. Obamacare prevented him from having his treatment denied, or worse, being dropped alltogether from my coverage on the grounds of having a pre-existing condition. (He's fine now, incidentally. We caught it early, and after a year's worth of dietary therapy and 1-on-1 treatment, he no longer meets any criteria for an autism diagnosis. He's for all intents and purposes, a completely normal toddler again. If you saw him, you'd never know.)
This legislation gave my son his life back, and helped my family kick the living shit out of a condition that destroys everything from children, to finances, to marriages. When you think about it, hell, it even protects my neighbors property values -- We were prepared at one point to sell our home and move somewhere cheaper in order to afford his treatment. We would have had to sell our home at a huge loss and go into debt. It's a minor repercussion in the bigger scheme of things, obviously, but it's true. It would have hurt our neighbor's property values as a result, by no fault of their own. The butterfly effect of being denied coverage would have extended outside of my own family.
Here's another one. Marriages. The failure rate of marriages involving the diagnosis of autism in a child is thought to be about 80%... The stress of coping with such a diagnosis is incredible. That, and costs involved in treatment can easily exceed $1M over a lifetime. Money that YOU and everyone else reading this would have to shoulder if we couldn't cover it ourselves. The legislation that passed allowed us (my wife and I) no longer worry about being destroyed financially."
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/gznyk/what_obama_care_has_done_for_me/c1rhehn