Quintan’s Quest for a Seizure Alert Dog

Quintan has spent the past year undergoing tests and treatments after he was diagnosed with a right frontal lobe tumour. Quintan had been experiencing multiple seizures a day, medication has reduced the frequency to a few a week. It has been determined that even with all the treatments and interventions Quintan will never be able to fully recover, he will alway suffer from seizures and due to the location of where the seizures originate from they will be very hard to control with medication. Quintan continues to work with his neurology team at sickkids and they continue to assess and reassess and alter plans as we go. It has been recommended that he get a seizure alert dog since he will alway have seizures! I have spent the past 3 months learning A LOT about services dogs!! There is one organization in Ontario/Canada that provides seizure dogs but due to covid they are unable to help Quintan. Because Quintan has mostly night time siezures he is a high risk of SUDEP (sudden unexpected Death in Epilepsy). Although Quintan isn’t classed as epileptic he still falls under this umbrella. It affects one third of children diagnosed with a seizure disorder and more often takes place while children are sleeping. Having a service dog for Quintan will provide a reliable seizure detection. We have been fortunate to find an organization that will be training the dog to notify Quintan prior to a seizure and wake him if he is sleeping, notify us that he is having a seizure as well as train the dog to dial a special phone so that Quintan can be safely left home alone. It truly will be life changing for him! The catch however is that we are needing to raise the funds independently for the dog as the organization (Little Angels service dogs) is American based not for profit and they cannot fund out of country . I’m not sure if anyone knows the cost of service dog, as I fell out of my chair when I heard, but we have to come up with $49,000 to get Quintan put on the dog matching wait list. Currently he is approved and the contract has been signed. There are 70 people ahead of him on the wait list and the sooner we get him to the wait list the sooner he’ll be safer and more independent! I know it’s a big ask as we have already been humbled with the generosity and support of Quintan’s medical needs by over the past year. A service dog will truly be life changing and will allow us to sleep better at night knowing there are multiple seizure detections at work in the house to ensure that Quintan will wake up every morning. Currently we rely on a baby video monitoring system and for a 11 year old boy it feels like an invasion of privacy. I can’t say how amazing this community as been with supporting Quintan and we are once again asking for help and support to better the quality of life for Quintan