Who this will help

Thank you so much for visiting Julia’s page.I’m Rachael- the organizer of this page. I’m an RN that has been working with Jules at home as she navigates her type 1 diabetes. Julia is a brittle type 1 diabetic. This is a severe and very rare form of type 1 diabetes. In this type of diabetes type 1, her blood sugars fluctuate dramatically and unpredictably even when she is following all of her instructions perfectly.

Julia was diagnosed in summer 2022. Julia also was diagnosed with gastroparesis 6 years ago. Gastroparesis even without being diabetic can be very serious, it causes the stomach to empty into the lower intestines much slower than usual. This, in turn, can cause nausea and vomiting and other digestion issues which is severely problematic for someone with brittle type 1 diabetes. She also struggles with a hormone condition called Addisons which can cause fatigue, weight loss, low blood pressure, and overall can negatively impact her diabetes.

Her daily life has been severely impacted in the last 16 months. She went from a fairly healthy life living in her own home in Maryland, to needing to move to Virginia so she can live with her retired parents. She had to move in with family because it is too dangerous for her to live alone at this time. She is generally homebound at this time due to the many symptoms she experiences, including nausea, vomiting, dizziness, fatigue, blurry vision, confusion and weakness among other things.

Over the past 16 months, she has had over a dozen trips to the ER related to these type 1 complications. Most recently, a very life-threatening ICU stay related to high blood sugars.

Prior to this she was a volunteer with meals on wheels. She desperately misses volunteering. She also has history of working in sales, and being an event planner in New York City. Julia is a big animal lover and has always had dogs.

She has many aspirations if she could feel better- right now she is working on learning Spanish and sign language from home. She has expressed much interest into entering the medical field herself, after meeting so many people that have taken care of her.

Due to this illness, she is unable to have children which had always been a dream of hers. She would one day love to foster children if given the opportunity and if she was medically stable.

So now that you know about Julia, I want to talk to you about the amazing wonders of a diabetic service dog.

A diabetic service dog is a very specific service dog that is trained at length to detect changes in their owner’s blood sugar levels. This includes scent detection training (they can detect high and low blood sugars in their owners). They are also alert trained (they can perform an alert behavior such as nudging or pawing to get their owner’s attention when they sugar is not where it should be).

Why are diabetic dogs so expensive?

Nowadays, people can confuse an emotional support dog with a service dog. But the cost of a highly trained diabetic service dog is attributed to their highly specialized training. Their professional trainers invest an incredibly significant amount of time to make sure the dog is well trained and reliable to detect blood sugar changes, behave well in public, alert properly and to customize the training to the individual who will be receiving the dog.

Why I'm fundraising

It was really important for me to offer to get this fundraiser together for Julia. I’ve been working with patients in a medical capacity for 14 years as an RN and every so often I come across a patient I know I will never forget. From the day I met her I was overwhelmed with her warmth, kindness and compassion. Despite all that she is going through she maintains an a wonderful sense of humor and will do whatever she can to make me laugh or smile when I visit with her. I was really touched by her spirit right away.

Very shortly after meeting her I found out she was in the hospital for diabetic ketoacidosis (very high blood sugar). Good blood sugar numbers for a type 1 diabetic would be: 80s to mid 100s. Consistently over 200 is concerning and consistently over 300 can lead to medical issues. Julia’s blood sugar can run from the 30s all the way to the 600s within hours which is highly dangerous. During this hospital stay I mentioned, her blood sugar was over 1,500, she was incredibly confused with severe dehydration, infections, kidney injury, and was completely unresponsive at times. According to hospital doctors, she was critically ill and it was life-threatening. Thankfully, she made it through. As her doctors and nurses continue to work with her to get her blood sugar numbers better controlled, we do believe a service dog may have helped prevent this life-threatening hospital stay and could prevent future emergencies for Julia.

The impact of your support

The impact of your support cannot be understated.

Truly, any donation matters, and if you are unable to donate at this time, even sharing this would be so impactful.

Those of us who have our health really take for granted the little things, like not worrying about if your sugar will go too low when you are sleeping and you won’t wake up. Or if your blood sugar won’t come down from being too high and you find yourself fighting for your life in the ICU.

If Julia had a diabetic dog, she could move back out on her own, resume volunteering, pursue a career , possibly foster children, and have confidence and hope for the future. She deserves those opportunities and I believe this is a small way we can help someone who is not asking for help, but is willing to receive it.

Julia and I thank you whole-heartedly for your time to read this post and for any way you can help, whether that be financial or just sharing it with people you may know. We also hope that if you have someone with Type 1 Diabetes in your life that this post helped bring awareness to you regarding their situation as it is such a difficult and incurable illness.