5.  ADD/ADHD
6.  Addiction and Substance Abuse
10. AIDS
12. Alcoholism
15. Alzheimer's
22. Arthritis
23. Asthma
26. Autism

This is a list of some common illnesses and diseases alphabetically which are diagnosable. Autism was 26 on this list and that was just up to “Au”. There are too many illnesses and diseases for everybody to be aware of or support them all.

The toughest part about having a child with autism is that the majority of people don’t care. People see your child acting out or behaving outside the expected “norm” and automatically think that it is from a lack of parenting or discipline. The reality is that parents of children with autism probably spend more time talking, demonstrating, encouraging good behaviour and disciplining bad behaviour than parents of “typical developing” children.

So why is it so challenging raising awareness for autism? And why is it that most people don’t care?

Autism is only a statistic until if affects someone you love. People in mass don’t care because it doesn’t affect them, it’s true. For example, myself, I don’t have anyone in my life that is affected by MS. I don’t spend my time researching MS, being able to know the symptoms and being able to identify them. Although I sympathize with people with MS and understand that it would be devastating in many cases to the individual and their families, but I know that there is no way I could actively participate and donate funds to every single cause out there.

So it truly is a tough job ... but somebody did it for diabetes, and somebody did it for cancer, and we’ll continue to do it for autism.

Hopefully we can raise awareness, raise acceptance, and sympathy, inspire researchers to develop more treatments, inspire governments to support our children under Medical Service Plans, and in all hope raise donations to help treat the reason we do this everyday of our lives.

We may only be making a small ripple in this big ocean but with your support we can make a tidal wave.

Daniel