Emotional support animal for Mattie

In August Mattie (Luke prefers the nickname Mattie now) became sick. He had the flu and then strep. About two days after starting medicine for that he had an episode where he lost many of his body functions temporarily including his vision and ability to walk. He has regained those functions, thank goodness, but it was just the beginning of a very difficult road. He struggled for about two months after that with these issues and very severe sudden onset OCD, separation anxiety, insomnia, extremely elevated blood pressure and an inability to eat more than very small amounts or very limited foods. He lost about 15% of his body weight during this time. Through care of an amazing psychiatrist and some wonderful medical help we’ve agreed on a clinical diagnosis of PANDAS which is essentially a neurological encephalitis. Life has been hard and very expensive. He is unable to even attend school. He has been home since august 29th. He has good days and bad days but this has affected every aspect of his life and he is such an amazing little human battling through all this. Mattie will need a lot more medical help and specialists to keep moving forward but we will cross that bridge when we get there. We do have insurance but it does not cover his psychiatrist, therapist or the specialists we have found. Mattie is on his second flare since his initial onset.

Matties dream is to own a sphinx cat. He’s researched them for years and we would love to make this dream come true for him. They are incredible therapy pets and would be friendly to the allergies his sister and dad both have. A sphinx from a breeder here runs about $2500 and will be a wait until April but we’d love to surprise him on Christmas morning with the news that he has a kitten reserved. This isn’t something we can do for him right now. As you can imagine his medical bills have been piling up already. Asking for help is not in my nature but there is nothing more important to me than helping my little boy on those days where he’s panicked and scared and he can’t access the help myself or his meds offer him. Please take some time to learn about PANDAS, it’s a complex and difficult prognosis.

https://pandasnetwork.org/what-is-pandas/

thank you for considering helping my little guy. He’s so strong and the most lovingly empathetic child I’ve ever met. He’s so full of life and so full of good and it’s the most painful experience of my life to watch so much taken from him.