After hearing one of their classmates suffers from seizures on a weekly basis, students at Tonganoxie Middle school came together to help.
Twelve year old Taylor McWilliams has Spina Bifinda.
“Her lesion is pretty high up on her spine and so she is always confined to a wheelchair,” her mother Brittany McWilliams said.
McWilliams said it causes her to have seizures.
“When she was about three or four, she had her first seizure. And it was a year before her next one and so we kind of just monitoring throughout time,” McWilliams said.
Currently on four medications, Taylor still has breakthrough seizures once a week.
“They vary. Some are real short, some are easy to recoup from. Others, she's completely exhausted and needs to lay back down and get her bearings together,” McWilliams said. “Out of everything we've dealt with medically, the seizures are probably one of the hardest things for me as a parents to really even grasp because you watch your kid completely incapacitated and you can't do anything to help."
McWilliams said they found 4 Paws for Ability, where service dogs are provided for children who suffer from seizures.
The family had to raise $15,000 for the application process and other expenses for the service dog. They were able to raise that through monetary donations.
After their application was accepted, McWilliams said she and Taylor will have to head down to Xenia, Ohio where the service dog is to meet and train with the dog.
But with costs coming to about $5,000, they needed some extra help.
“We had already asked everyone for monetary donations, so we wanted to find something that people would feel that they could be apart of this whole process without feeling like they need to come up with more money,” she said. “We chose to do Funds2Orgs Shoe Drive. We collect the shoes and we get 40 cents a pound for all of the shoes that then would be given to us, then that would be used for travel expenses and vet bills and upkeep.”
That’s when Taylor’s life skills teacher, Julie Crawley stepped in.
“Taylor is new to my classroom this year and because she does have medical issues, like seizures, we needed all of the staff to be informed about that,” she said. “So Taylor's mom, Brittany, came before school and told us all about what we needed to watch for and how we can keep Taylor safe and conversation led to the service dog. And they were raising money for that through a shoe drive.”
Through raffles and drawings, students and the Tonganoxie community were able to donate more than 1,000 shoes just in one week.
“The feeling in the air that week was everybody helping and knowing that they could do something to help someone else,” Crawley said. “It was a great week.”
The shoe drive happened back in October, but shoes are still coming in.
More than 7,500 shoes have been donated to help Taylor get to Ohio and meet her service dog.
“Kids had a real purpose. We counted shoes, we bagged shoes, we had an assembly line. We got to do real life and help Taylor,” Crawley said.
The school will be collecting shoes until February 12.
If you’d like to help and donate shoes, there are places you can go to drop them off to help Taylor:
- S&S Body and Auto - 922 E 4th Street, Tonganoxie
- Tonganoxie Public Library - 303 Bury Street, Tonganoxie
- Kick It Foos - Human Foosball - 8166 Monticello Terrace, Shawnee
- Integrated Behavioral Technologies - 1106 N 155th Street, Suite B, Basehor
- Koma Tae Kwan Do - 11160 S Lone Elm Road, Olathe
