An LEO Family In Dire Need of Help
This adorable little 4 year old girl is Eva. She enjoys all the same things that other little 4 year old girls do, but Eva is different. She has type one diabetes. While that can be a big issue for most adults, it is HUGE for a 4 year old. Unlike an adult, kids cannot monitor themselves and they don’t have nearly as good a read on what their bodies are telling them.
Eva was diagnosed at 2, which is incredibly rare. Less than 1% of children in the US are afflicted at that age and as a result, medical support is slim at best. Also, for those well educated about diabetes, you will likely suggest a GCM (continuous glucose monitor ). She does have one, and yes the CGM saves her life on a daily basis, but the technology is intended for an adult. It cannot keep up with her. It will often think she is at normal levels, but in reality she’s on her way to passing out. Eva’s parents have nearly lost her (as in she has almost died) several times, and because of that, they need to constantly monitor her blood glucose levels. When I say constantly, I mean all day and all night long, every hour or so.
Eva’s dad is a cop, and because of Eva’s condition, her mom had to stop working in order to stay home and care for Eva. Eva is not an only child either, and in general, life for a family of four on one cop’s salary is not luxurious, but when you throw in a life threatening, debilitating medical condition afflicting a toddler, the phrase “just scrimping by” takes on a whole new meaning.
Eva and her family are in desperate need of a very specialized service dog. You see, a dog’s sense of smell is so acute, when properly trained they can sense when a person’s blood sugar (glucose) levels are too high or too low. I’ve heard the dog’s sense of smell described this way: As a human, when we walk into a kitchen where someone is cooking spaghetti sauce, we smell it and our brain tells us it is spaghetti sauce. When a dog goes into the same kitchen, the dog smells tomato sauce, garlic, salt, pepper, other spices, and all the other ingredients, all separately. That tremendous sense of smell, one of the things that makes them great trackers in the law enforcement world, also makes them ideal as a service dog for a diabetic person who is physically incapable of monitoring their own blood sugar levels.
Throughout the entire US, there are just a few trainers who perform this very specialized training. As such, their time and services are highly in demand, which means the training is not cheap, as in we are talking in the neighborhood of $50,000. For a family already skimping by on a cop’s salary, that is an insurmountable expense.
About a year and a half ago, Eva’s family realized they had to do something to try and make Eva’s service dog a reality, so they ran a GoFundMe fundraiser in order to try and get money for Eva’s dog and its training. They gathered a fairly decent amount of money, but not nearly enough to cover all the expenses. Still, some help is better than none, so they pressed on.
What followed was a series of bad luck, heartache, disappointments, failures, shady dealing which all eventually lead to lawyers getting involved and talk of non-disclosure agreements. While that whole fiasco is far from settled, what remains constant is that Eva is still without a service dog, still has type 1 diabetes, still is having serious medical issue because of it, and now the family is essentially back where they started before the previous fund raising attempts.
In an effort to start over, a new fund raiser has been established. But here is the thing about this current fund raiser, it is not being run by Eva’s family. It is being run by a bunch of cops who are friends with Eva’s dad. We know the situation, we know what is going on, and in typical cop fashion, we cannot just sit by and watch. We have to try and fix it.
Also in typical cop fashion, Eva’s dad has been vehemently protesting this whole new effort from the start. Not only is he proud and has difficulty accepting help (like most other cops), but he feels absolutely horrible about what happened to the money raised in the previous fund raiser, and is blaming himself. Eva’s dad has been begging the rest of us NOT to do this, until yesterday…
Yesterday, Christmas day 2016, Eva and her family had another very close call. This was posted by her dad.
Almost lost her again. Just now. I’m sitting on the side of the road both of my daughters crying and I’m so unbelievably pissed off at everything. I am all in. Any resistance I gave I am all in. Thank you all, god bless you all. Almost lost her again. Got her back up again but she lost consciousness on our drive. Her CGM (continuos glucose monitor) thought she was at 74. She was below 20. Seeing her eyes roll out the back of her head like that I can’t handle it.
Having your 4 year old daughter almost die in front of you, again, will make even the strongest of men suck up their pride and accept some much needed help.
Folks, this is the season of giving and sharing. Salty Dad from Facebook is donating a puppy valued at $2500. I’m forgoing that Christmas present I was going to buy myself and am sending the money to Eva. I’m asking you from the bottom of my heart, if you can spare a few bucks, send them to Eva’s family. Five dollars does not seem like much, hell, it will barely buy you lunch, but if everyone gave just $5, we could easily cover the costs and get this LEO family on the road toward a more normal life. Times are really tough for some folks, and I realize that not everyone can spare even $5, but sharing this story costs you nothing. Even if you cannot afford to give, please share this as it might reach someone who can.
The current GoFundMe account can be found here and contains some more specifics about their situation. If you have any questions about this situation, please ask in the comments below. The only thing I will not be able to discuss is any specifics with previous training company, due to pending legal action.
-Matt
—————–
Note: A few people have commented that they were unable to get the embedded links to the GoFundMe page to work. I’m not sure if the problem is a platform issue, or a browser issue as no one I know personally has had a problem getting any of the links to work, but on the off chance you are one of those few people for whom they aren’t working, here is the direct link to the GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/evas-diabetic-service-dog-training