Many of you commented on how touched you were, by the story of Carly Fleischmann, I wrote about last month. Her wonderful story is part of an hour long 20/20 special about medical mysteries. This is a great opportunity to learn more about the world of Autism that is affecting so many of our children. I hope you will watch it!
Here is Carly's letter that she sent to me today, and asked me to pass on to my readers:
Hi. My name is Carly Fleischmann and this Friday August 7, 2009, you can see a small glimpse of how I live with autism on abc’s 20/20. But this is not the real story. The real story is that 20/20 is doing a story on autism. A lot of people in the media feel that autism is not a story that people want to hear about. But I was once told that ignorance is caused by not having knowledge on the subject. So if you think about it that way shouldn’t the media show more stories about autism? There are so many stories out there of people and families living with autism that really need to be told.
If this Friday we can show 20/20 that people will watch these stories, maybe they’ll want to put more of them on the air. If after watching 20/20 this Friday night, you feel you need to do something, email 20/20 at http://abcnews.go.com/2020 and tell them what you think of the story and that you would like to see more stories done.
I am asking for your help right now. I would like you to email this note to all your friends telling them to watch 20/20 this Friday at 10:00 EST. Also I would love it if you could post this note with my Carly 20/20 badge on your webpage, blog or even facebook page. If you have a twitter account you can even change your profile picture to my badge to show your support.
You can get your Carly badge at: http://carlysvoice.com/?page_id=183
I would like to throw out a challenge to Oprah, Ellen Degeneres, Barbra Walters, Larry King, 60 Minutes and any other talk show or news stations to start talking about autism.
Someone once said to me that if you bend one Popsicle stick it will break but if you try to bend a hundred Popsicle sticks together they won’t. Well I am only one Popsicle stick asking you to join me to become many.
Your autistic girl who tells it like it is,
Carly Fleischmann
