Our daughter, Iris Guinevere, was diagnosed with epilepsy and hypotonia at the age of 4 months, then diagnosed with Sturge-Weber syndrome just a few months later. She is now 14 months, but she will continue to live with these conditions for the rest of her life. There is no cure for any of her diagnoses.

Sturge-Weber syndrome is a rare condition, and our Iris has the rarest type. She has been diagnosed with Type 3, meaning her symptoms are mostly neurological. Iris has what is known as refractory epilepsy, a condition where seizures persist despite treatment with multiple antiepileptic drugs.

She has been known to have subclinical seizures in which you can’t tell by looking at her that she is having a seizure.

She has also been known to have seizures lasting 15-20 minutes or longer, which is dangerously long. We have emergency medications we can dispense during episodes lasting longer than 3 minutes; however, the sooner we can begin timing her episodes, the sooner she can receive her emergency meds.

Due to these factors concerning her medical conditions, we believe that she would greatly benefit from having a seizure service dog. Not only would this dog provide love and comfort, but this dog would be trained to detect subclinical seizures as well as alert us and Iris to oncoming episodes.

The going rate for a fully trained seizure dog ranges in the $20,000s. As you can imagine, Iris has a lot of medical bills, and prioritizing more money towards a service dog would be very difficult for our family.

If you consider supporting by donation, it would mean so much to us, and Iris would benefit greatly. It would mean peace of mind for our family, companionship and protection for Iris, as well as more independence.

Thank you for your consideration.

With lots of love,

The Adams’