University of Memphis student Amy Halper, at home in Illinois during Spring Break with her family dog, Boone, hopes to soon be able to afford a service dog to help her cope with epileptic seizures.
A bed rail with mesh netting is firmly placed on the side of sophomore Amy Halper’s bed so she won’t roll off during one of her seizures and injure herself.
Halper, a University of Memphis student, has been suffering from epileptic seizures since June 2015.
A former cheerleader, she has always been the picture of health, but now she takes up to 34 pills a day and pricks her finger 10-25 times a day to make sure her blood sugar doesn’t get too low.
She is unable to shower without letting someone know for fear of having a seizure and drowning, and her sense of independence has diminished quickly in the past nine months, which is why Halper is petitioning for a service dog.
In January, Halper published her link for donations for a service dog on Facebook and has received $1,084 from her Alpha Delta Pi sorority sisters, family and friends.
However, obtaining a fully trained epilepsy service dog will cost $25,000.
“I’m from Algonquin, Illinois,†Halper said. “My family is literally nine hours away, so it can get really lonely. It can also get really scary, and a service dog would help. This would be the beginning for me to regain my independence and become comfortable with being alone again.â€
Getting a service dog wouldn’t just affect Halper but also her housemates, senior psychology major Stephanie Clein said.
“A seizure dog would be able to detect if Amy’s about to seize or if she’s over stimulated by her triggers, which are really loud things or being really cold, and it would alert the dog that she’s in trouble,†Clein said.
Clein describes how it would help everyone within the house and take a lot of pressure off of the other girls because they wouldn’t always have to be on guard for when she is about to have a seizure.
“Once, Amy was seizing so hard that the rest of the housemates and I had to form a human barricade so that she wouldn’t bang her head into the wall,†Clein said. “It gets rough sometimes, but everyone has her job. We have a general plan of what to do.â€
A service dog would also benefit Halper in her academic life.
It would provide her professors with a better sense of the severity of Halper’s condition and to expect that she will sometimes miss class because of her late trips to the emergency room.
The service dog would be allowed to accompany her to the emergency room, as well as doctor appointments, which would give her peace of mind and a sense of companionship.
Despite the struggles of living with epilepsy, Halper remains encouraged and hopeful saying, “I’m moving out of the sorority house next year, and my biggest hope is to have a service dog to provide me with dependability, comfort and protection."
