By Julie Hutchison | President, Co-Founder and Chelsea's Mother
It was a busy 2018 for The Chelsea Hutchison Foundation. We continue to reach far and grant comfort and hope to those affected by seizures/epilepsy. We have had an increase in visibility nationally and because of that we have seen a large increase in the number of requests. We still provide as many grants and devices as we can and will continue to do so.
With your generous support and the support of others and our events, we have provided funding for over 725 life-saving monitors to date. We thought you might enjoy see some of our most recent recipients.
These monitoring devices can alert a parent or caregiver of a seizure and allow them an opportunity to administer life-saving measures if necessary. We believe that every epilepsy diagnosis should come with a monitor, but sadly they don't. Insurance does not cover these devices. Epilepsy affects over 3 million Americans - 65 million worldwide. This is more than multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy and Parkinson's disease - COMBINED!
"When our daughter was diagnosed with epilepsy at age 1 1/2, my biggest fear was her having a seizure at night. I hadn’t even heard of SUDEP (Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy) and the docs certainly didn’t tell me it was a thing. I was labeled a paranoid mom and told she would be fine. At the time, she’d never had seizures at night. Then her epilepsy returned at age 12. At age 13 she had her first (that we knew of) tonic clonic in the middle of the night. By this time, I had researched SUDEP and knew my fears were not in my head. So we bought an alarm. And it failed. Multiple times. Two of those times during nighttime tonic clonic seizures. But like so many middle class families, we didn’t exactly have the expendable funds to purchase yet another seizure alarm. Especially if we weren’t sure it would work. Someone told us about The Chelsea Hutchison Foundation and I’m writing this with tears in my eyes because sometimes human kindness doesn’t always show itself. But it did. When we were told we were approved for a SAMiAlert monitor, I couldn’t believe that someone would do that for us. For no other reason than to help us....kindness." Vicki B.
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