Help Beth get a cardiac alert assistance dog

Hi! My name’s Beth, and I’m fundraising to help me get a medical alert and multi-purpose assistance (service) dog, to help me manage and live a better, safer life with the several serious chronic illness disabilities I’ve been living with since I was 12 years old. Life has always been about maximising my opportunities to contribute and engage in society, and live with joy despite it all, and my doctors and I think an assistance dog will  improve my symptoms, safety and quality of life. Among my conditions, I have POTS, a serious and currently incurable neurological  disorder which causes severe and dangerous cardiac symptoms, which affect my quality of life, mobility, ability to work, and safety. I have had this since adolescence, but it was drastically worsened by a bad COVID infection. 

I also have MCAS, which causes regular anaphylaxis (dangerous severe allergic reaction).

So why a medical alert dog? After very extensive individual training, certain clever dogs can detect (by scent) the unpredictable heart rate rises from POTS, and pre-alert so the handler can minimise or avoid the attack altogether, or get to a safer place to ride it out. When POTS is flaring, the heart beats very very fast (which is bad for long term heart health) and the patient can black out (syncope), or become very disoriented and unwell. As well as alerting and preventing the attack, the dog can then provide deep pressure therapy to slow the heart, as well as practical mitigations like fetching meds and electrolytes or fluids, or fetching help, or providing safety in a busy crowded place by orbiting or blocking the patient while they recover, or finding a trusted companion.

Other important tasks he will be trained to do include mobility tasks like retrieving dropped objects (POTS can flare when you reach forward to the floor), crowd safety, and forward momentum pull to assist with walking when syncopal (at risk of blacking out).

We also hope to train the dog to be able to detect my allergens in food, and warn me not to eat them by mistake. Because my allergens are not standard, they are never listed by law or habit, so a lot of meals are allergy roulette.

He also has to be impeccably raised and trained to be able to access everywhere he is allowed to by law, without getting distracted or spooked. Assistance dogs have the same rights and access as other medical aids like wheelchairs, so need to be very solidly behaved in public.

As you can imagine, the time and costs involved are large. You may have heard a sighted guide dog takes 3 years and costs around $80,000 to train. He will be less than that, but still around 2 or 2.5 years old when he comes to me. Unfortunately there is only one charity/non-profit in the UK who trains the medical alert I need, and their wait list is running 6 years at the moment. So we made the decision to engage a private trainer who specialises in this amazing work, Hands and Paws Canine Training, and she has paired me with Otis, a smart, sweet and un-flappable Chocolate Labrador, from her service dog program. All funds raised are towards the cost of the dog. With savings and family generosity, we are over 2/3 of the way there. 

Why a dog and not wearables? Wearables don’t warn you before the event, they don’t mitigate the symptoms,and they don’t alert you if they detect you are upright or moving! This is not very helpful for POTS, which is postural so usually flares when upright or moving about your daily life.

As we say, until there’s a cure, there’s a dog.

Thanks so much for reading this far.

Beth (and Otis!)

#POTS #longcovid #MECFS #MCAS #servicedog #untiltheresacuretheresadog