Welcome to Why Not Me The World Podcast, hosted by Tony Mantour.

Broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee.

Join us as our guests tell us their stories.

Some will make you laugh, Some will make you cry. Real life people who will

inspire and show that you are not alone in this world.

Hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance,

and a better understanding for autism around the world.

Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World. Today's guest, Anna Kennedy, OBE, is from England.

She has such a great story to tell. She has two autistic children. She's involved in local charities, she's on the radio, there's just so many things that she does and I'm just so happy to have her on. So welcome to the show.

Well, thank you, Tony. It's my pleasure. I understand you have two autistic children. If you could tell us a little bit about them.

Yes, I have two sons, Patrick and Angelo, they're now aged 33 and 30.

At that age when they were born, autism wasn't as... they now aged 33 and 30.

At that age when they were born, autism wasn't as prevalent.

What led you to believe that they needed to be diagnosed for autism?

Okay, so as I say, I've got two sons.

First son, Patrick. I had a difficult pregnancy with Patrick.

I had pre-Glamia and Toxemia and I had him very early, 11 weeks premature.

Obviously it was quite stressful at the time because it's your first child and he was in

hospital for 10 weeks.

Wow that's very tough. We didn't think he was going to make it. We had the last rights.

Then he had a blood transfusion, which was the making of him. I always remember he was

two pounds when he was born, almost like a small bag of sugar. He was in the incubator. He just, he was making strides forward and then he would make strides back and he was picking up infections and then he had the blood transfusion so thank you to whoever gave the blood.

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