Seizure alert service dog

Hi, I am the mother of my 2 year old son who unfortunately has been dealt an unlucky hand through his young life thus far. Mason was diagnosed with an emergency diagnosis of infantile spasms, west syndrome when he was just 4 months old. This means that Mason has severe epilepsy. At masons peak of his epilepsy he was having up to 400-500 seizures DAILY. Yet he still remains so positive and resilient. Mason underwent intensive treatment immediately as this is a life threatening diagnosis, the first year of his life he essentially just laid there due to all of the intense medications and daily injections he was on to try to get control of his seizures. Due to his epilepsy he also is globally developmentally delayed and nonverbal, but we are working very hard every day to make progress in his development. After, Mason’s intensive treatment we thought we had reached seizure freedom, but with infantile spasms comes an increased likelihood of developing another form of epilepsy. About 7 months later Mason was diagnosed with intractable epilepsy with epileptics spasms and myoclonic seizures, this is incredibly hard to treat. Mason was deemed medication resistant, meaning there is less than a 3% chance we will ever control his seizures with medications. Our only hope is that he would be a surgical candidate for brain surgery. So, we began the intensive testing process. Thankfully Mason was a candidate, but the surgery options weren’t great, a hemisphereotomy disconnecting the left side of his brain from the right, or a laser ablation which only had a 20% chance of working. Through the testing process one of the procedures they do is called an SEEG, where they drill 14 holes in masons skull and insert catheter electrodes into his brain to get all the data they need to try to pin point what area of his brain is causing his seizures. This is a very painful procedure. They found the He has a frontal cortical dysplasia in the left temporal lobe of his brain but 9 other areas were also responsible for his seizures, the plan was to try to ablate one area believed to be triggering all the other areas in his brain of seizures. We went through with the surgery, and we are remaining hopeful it worked, so far Mason has been doing the best he ever has and has been working really hard in therapies making amazing strides, running around like a typical toddler, climbing on everything, making new sounds, clapping & interacting with family constantly. It truly is so amazing and we are forever grateful to see such progress. We still continue to do daily seizure meds, appointments and therapies but couldn’t be happier with how far he has come. As of now we don’t think he has had any seizures since a week post-op and we hope it continues to stay that way. If Mason remains seizure free for 2 years and his EEG looks good then we can start the discussion with his care team to try to wean him off of seizure meds. Ultimately a seizure service dog helps give us peace of mind during sleep periods and when he goes to school or other outings we are not there for. His service dog also is there to help side him with his sensory processing disorder needs, asking for help from others or adults if he needs it, a companion for him and in social settings. It is so great to see him be his happy, smiley, outgoing self and doing so much better

Mason was granted a grant to have a seizure alert service dog to help him and alert us or adults (if he’s at school etc.) if he’s about to have a seizure or currently having one, since Mason is nonverbal he’s not able to call for help or alert the onset of seizures. This service dog will mainly be for safety purposes and potentially save his life. The dog will also sleep with Mason so that if he were to have a seizure in his sleep we can be alerted immediately. There currently are no seizure detection devices for home aside from an Apple Watch with an app but it is not compatible with Masons seizure type and not entirely accurate or something he would wear.

As I’m sure most know, service dogs are incredibly expensive. Typically $45,000-$65,000 but we need to raise $14,000 more to pay to begin the long training process. Since Mason’s service dog requires seizure scent training it is a more advanced training so it is more expensive. We don’t usually ask for much but are giving this a shot in order to help our sweet, strong, smiley boy and give him a safer more comfortable life. If you would like to donate anything we would be incredibly grateful, if you cannot and simply would just like to share this go fund me we would be equally as grateful. All proceeds will go directly to Dulebohn Dog Training. If you’ve gotten this far, thank you for taking the time out of your day to read this, we appreciate it more than you know