Hello! My name is Alyssa, I’m the mother of Ozias Vlahos. He’s an insanely energetic almost 3-year-old that has the biggest heart for his siblings, an obsession with HotWheels cars, and a love of singing every children’s song under the sun.

When he was 10 months old, we were living in Texas, and he began experiencing seizures. This rocked our whole world. The doctors were confused because the type of seizures he experiences are not typical. Instead of having convulsions like a lot of epileptics, Ozias’s brain signals for him to stop breathing, and he loses life in his body. For me, his father, and our other family members, this is extremely traumatic because he turns a harsh blue from head to toe, and it is a fight to stay calm and take the proper steps to care for him during his seizures. Instead of waiting for him to stop convulsing, it’s very heart-wrenching waiting for him to basically regain life and color and to breathe again. We do have emergency meds to help in those situations, but that doesn’t stop the worry of when he is going to have one.

Once we figured out what was going on, Ozias was put on a drug called Keppra. This medication caused my baby to turn into a zombie. His bright eyes became dull, his learning and thriving halted, and he just became a completely different baby. This broke our hearts even more. When the Keppra wasn’t stopping the seizures any longer, the doctors decided they wanted to add other medications. We refused because of numerous mental and physical reasons, but the main one being my father with epilepsy had been successful with using CBD oil to treat his in Iowa. So we made the decision to move back to Iowa to be closer to family and have access to the necessary CBD for Ozias. Since we moved back in 2023, his seizures have been mostly controlled by the CBD oil but not completely. The laws in Iowa continue to fluctuate when it comes to CBD oil, and that is scary for us.

We have a limited routine due to not knowing when he will experience a seizure or have a bad day of multiple or an unfortunate week with dozens of them. That is hard on Ozias because he is so active and just wants to be everywhere doing everything like a normal 3-year-old.

My goal is to give my son every opportunity to do things he wants and go out in public and for us to be as prepared as possible. I have done the research on the use of service dogs to assist Ozias. A service dog trained correctly would be able to detect when a seizure is coming on. They can alert us or other people of the danger and can also help retrieve medications in instances. Not only would that help tremendously, but because of Ozias being on Keppra, we have experienced some developmental delays. He doesn’t communicate with us in words or phrases yet, and sometimes he becomes self-harming and will bang his head on the floor or wall when upset or not understood. The service dog can be trained to intervene in those situations and help redirect the focus of my baby who cannot tell me why he’s so upset.

I want my son to have the comfort of a companion all the time because he is very independent. He loves to play independently, and that is also scary for us. In the moments where he’s playing in his room because he wants to play alone and I’m cooking dinner and the family is doing whatever, the peace of mind that someone is always watching him would bring incredible peace to our family.

The problem with this dream for my son is that the cost of the service dog training is 20-25k dollars. I have found a number of reputable breeders that specifically breed Labradors and Golden Retrievers for this exact purpose. I have also found two programs that will train a puppy for Ozias. I am reaching out to my community because the cost is too much for our family at this time, and I’m hopeful I can reach this goal with a little help from those who may possibly have it to give. My baby deserves to be able to just live life, I want to give that to him!