Diabetic student pins hopes of independence on alert dog

Thursday
Nov 30, 2017 at 6:58 PM Dec 1, 2017 at 10:58 AM

A trained nose could help her avert medical crises before they begin

Billy Cox Staff Writer @billeecox

LAKEWOOD RANCH — By the time Sophia Helme received her world-rocking Type 1 diabetes diagnosis at age 11, her blood sugar levels had spiked so high, the pediatrician’s first recommendation was an order: Get to the hospital. Now. “I asked if I could go by my house first and pick up my things,” she recalls. “He said no.”

“I was with her and I don’t know how I drove, I honestly don’t,” adds mom Andrea. “I had no idea what we were dealing with.”

“Floored” — that’s how dad, John Helme, described the impact of the news. The Navy veteran had defended his community for most of his adult life as a Sarasota County Sheriff’s deputy, with a couple of broken necks, a couple of broken knees, and even a bitten hand (human culprit, not canine) to show for it. But now, suddenly, he was helpless to protect his oldest daughter from a thing he couldn’t see or understand.

That was seven years ago. The family, which now includes Sophia’s 12-year-old sister Gianna and a pint-sized 6-pound rescue dog named Lucy, has learned to roll with the new reality — the needles, the calculations for blood sugar, or glucose, the insulin doses, the digital monitors, the dietary adjustments, the close calls. Seven years of clockwork mindfulness continues to rouse mom and dad in the middle of the night, drawing them to Sophia’s room, sometimes tag-teaming, to make sure their sleeping daughter’s volatile glucose readings are stable.

Today, at 18, the Sarasota Military Academy Class of 2017 graduate is ready to take the biggest step of her life. She wants to go to college and live independently. Sort of. Sophia will need help. From a four-legged creature that can detect glucose fluctuations between regular testing intervals and warn her to take insulin before a crisis occurs.

And no, it can’t be Lucy.

It will take a dog with up to two years of specialized schooling, and the Helmes are pinning their hopes on a remarkable program in North Carolina called Eyes Ears Nose & Paws. Acquiring a dog with a $20,000 skill set, plus an additional $5,000 in personal training and travel expenses, isn’t cheap. And that’s why the family has reluctantly agreed to become the beneficiaries of a “Cornhole for Heroes” fundraiser at Sarasota’s White Buffalo Restaurant on Saturday at noon.

“I’ve worked alongside John for a long time and he has given his time, quietly, to veterans events all his life,” says fundraiser coordinator Kevin Kenney, a retired Sarasota Sheriff’s Office major and a board member of Operation Patriot Support — a local veterans’ charity. “I think it’s time we helped pay his family back.”

The Helmes are frequent volunteers for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s nonprofit fundraisers, which hope to develop a cure for 1.25 million Americans suffering from Type 1 diabetes. The genetic affliction is a debilitating autoimmune disorder caused by the pancreas’ inability to produce insulin, the hormone that dispatches glucose from the bloodstream to the body. Before insulin therapy, most Type 1 patients had abbreviated lifespans. Even so, 24/7 glucose monitoring is a life sentence.

The diabetes alert-dog phenomenon is such a recent option that the JDRF has no database to gauge its efficacy or prevalence, according to spokesperson Kristy Evans. But the ability to manage and direct dogs’ extraordinary range of smell for specific targeting — from detecting plastic-wrapped cocaine inside tanks of gasoline to sniffing out internal organ cancers — is a science that appears limited only by the imagination.

Equipped with 300 million olfactory receptors, dogs’ scent-detecting capacities are projected to be at least 10,000 times greater than humans. Those abilities can isolate odors in parts per trillion, including pheromones, which can be chemical signatures of human emotions. As one researcher told PBS’ Nova: “If you make the analogy to vision, what you and I can see at a third of a mile, a dog could see more than 3,000 miles away and still see as well.”

Even as some scientists hope to reverse-engineer dog noses to develop sharper diagnostics, canine cognition expert Alexandra Horowitz offers a reminder that efforts to exploit dogs’ unique talents go back thousands of years. But the systematic study of dogs’ olfactory maps is a recent development.

“The dog nose was likely only studied for itself more recently — but as with all animals, the dogs’ anatomy would have been studied as a model for humans,” states the author of “Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know” in an email to the Herald-Tribune. “Most of the research that I draw on for my book on the canine olfactory ability is from the last 50 years, and draws out of both a pursuit of pure knowledge as well as a practical interest in modeling the dog nose.”

In her book, Horowitz addresses the “confusing melody of smells” generated by human physiology, of skin “covered in sweat and sebaceous glands, which are regularly churning out fluid and oils” along with “a clutch of bacteria munching and excreting away.” Psychologist/dog author Stanley Coren likens the human body to a “snowstorm” that sheds “50 million skin cells each minute.”

Targeted scents are what most fascinate researchers, however, and in Carrboro, North Carolina, one of Eyes Ears Nose & Paws’ graduates made national headlines in 2013 when a rescue terrier mix named J.J. was invited to attend the surgery of a 7-year-old girl at Duke Medical Center. The patient, Kaelyn Krawczyk, had a rare liver disorder notorious for triggering violent allergic reactions. The anesthesiologist wanted J.J. in the room to alert staff to impending flareups before they manifested, and the experiment was successful.

Initially founded in 2008 to provide mobility independence to the disabled, EENP works primarily with people-pleasing Labrador and golden retrievers. For diabetic assistance, trainers take salivary DNA samples with cotton swabs to establish baseline alert scents, and teach each dog as many as 50 commands. The canines are ready to operate independently at anywhere from 18 to 24 months old.

Given the public demand for assistance dogs, the average wait time nationally is between 2 to 4 years, says EENP spokesperson Rachel Robertson. However, thanks to an innovative prison program that teaches North Carolina inmates to train the dogs, EENP has trimmed its own backlog to 1 to 2 years.

For Sophia Helme, that could work out well if her family’s recent application for an EENP trainee is accepted. She attends nearby State College of Florida for now, but hopes to study occupational therapy at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers. “I’ve always kind of wanted to go into the medical field,” she says. “I think it’s important to help people.”

The first step on that journey begins with Saturday’s fundraiser, even though it puts the Helmes into a somewhat awkward predicament. “This is very humbling. People have been so kind to us,” says Andrea. “It’s hard for us to ask for help. But this is our daughter."

Thursday
Nov 30, 2017 at 6:58 PM Dec 1, 2017 at 10:58 AM

A trained nose could help her avert medical crises before they begin

Billy Cox Staff Writer @billeecox

LAKEWOOD RANCH — By the time Sophia Helme received her world-rocking Type 1 diabetes diagnosis at age 11, her blood sugar levels had spiked so high, the pediatrician’s first recommendation was an order: Get to the hospital. Now. “I asked if I could go by my house first and pick up my things,” she recalls. “He said no.”

“I was with her and I don’t know how I drove, I honestly don’t,” adds mom Andrea. “I had no idea what we were dealing with.”

“Floored” — that’s how dad, John Helme, described the impact of the news. The Navy veteran had defended his community for most of his adult life as a Sarasota County Sheriff’s deputy, with a couple of broken necks, a couple of broken knees, and even a bitten hand (human culprit, not canine) to show for it. But now, suddenly, he was helpless to protect his oldest daughter from a thing he couldn’t see or understand.

That was seven years ago. The family, which now includes Sophia’s 12-year-old sister Gianna and a pint-sized 6-pound rescue dog named Lucy, has learned to roll with the new reality — the needles, the calculations for blood sugar, or glucose, the insulin doses, the digital monitors, the dietary adjustments, the close calls. Seven years of clockwork mindfulness continues to rouse mom and dad in the middle of the night, drawing them to Sophia’s room, sometimes tag-teaming, to make sure their sleeping daughter’s volatile glucose readings are stable.

Today, at 18, the Sarasota Military Academy Class of 2017 graduate is ready to take the biggest step of her life. She wants to go to college and live independently. Sort of. Sophia will need help. From a four-legged creature that can detect glucose fluctuations between regular testing intervals and warn her to take insulin before a crisis occurs.

And no, it can’t be Lucy.

It will take a dog with up to two years of specialized schooling, and the Helmes are pinning their hopes on a remarkable program in North Carolina called Eyes Ears Nose & Paws. Acquiring a dog with a $20,000 skill set, plus an additional $5,000 in personal training and travel expenses, isn’t cheap. And that’s why the family has reluctantly agreed to become the beneficiaries of a “Cornhole for Heroes” fundraiser at Sarasota’s White Buffalo Restaurant on Saturday at noon.

“I’ve worked alongside John for a long time and he has given his time, quietly, to veterans events all his life,” says fundraiser coordinator Kevin Kenney, a retired Sarasota Sheriff’s Office major and a board member of Operation Patriot Support — a local veterans’ charity. “I think it’s time we helped pay his family back.”

The Helmes are frequent volunteers for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s nonprofit fundraisers, which hope to develop a cure for 1.25 million Americans suffering from Type 1 diabetes. The genetic affliction is a debilitating autoimmune disorder caused by the pancreas’ inability to produce insulin, the hormone that dispatches glucose from the bloodstream to the body. Before insulin therapy, most Type 1 patients had abbreviated lifespans. Even so, 24/7 glucose monitoring is a life sentence.

The diabetes alert-dog phenomenon is such a recent option that the JDRF has no database to gauge its efficacy or prevalence, according to spokesperson Kristy Evans. But the ability to manage and direct dogs’ extraordinary range of smell for specific targeting — from detecting plastic-wrapped cocaine inside tanks of gasoline to sniffing out internal organ cancers — is a science that appears limited only by the imagination.

Equipped with 300 million olfactory receptors, dogs’ scent-detecting capacities are projected to be at least 10,000 times greater than humans. Those abilities can isolate odors in parts per trillion, including pheromones, which can be chemical signatures of human emotions. As one researcher told PBS’ Nova: “If you make the analogy to vision, what you and I can see at a third of a mile, a dog could see more than 3,000 miles away and still see as well.”

Even as some scientists hope to reverse-engineer dog noses to develop sharper diagnostics, canine cognition expert Alexandra Horowitz offers a reminder that efforts to exploit dogs’ unique talents go back thousands of years. But the systematic study of dogs’ olfactory maps is a recent development.

“The dog nose was likely only studied for itself more recently — but as with all animals, the dogs’ anatomy would have been studied as a model for humans,” states the author of “Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know” in an email to the Herald-Tribune. “Most of the research that I draw on for my book on the canine olfactory ability is from the last 50 years, and draws out of both a pursuit of pure knowledge as well as a practical interest in modeling the dog nose.”

In her book, Horowitz addresses the “confusing melody of smells” generated by human physiology, of skin “covered in sweat and sebaceous glands, which are regularly churning out fluid and oils” along with “a clutch of bacteria munching and excreting away.” Psychologist/dog author Stanley Coren likens the human body to a “snowstorm” that sheds “50 million skin cells each minute.”

Targeted scents are what most fascinate researchers, however, and in Carrboro, North Carolina, one of Eyes Ears Nose & Paws’ graduates made national headlines in 2013 when a rescue terrier mix named J.J. was invited to attend the surgery of a 7-year-old girl at Duke Medical Center. The patient, Kaelyn Krawczyk, had a rare liver disorder notorious for triggering violent allergic reactions. The anesthesiologist wanted J.J. in the room to alert staff to impending flareups before they manifested, and the experiment was successful.

Initially founded in 2008 to provide mobility independence to the disabled, EENP works primarily with people-pleasing Labrador and golden retrievers. For diabetic assistance, trainers take salivary DNA samples with cotton swabs to establish baseline alert scents, and teach each dog as many as 50 commands. The canines are ready to operate independently at anywhere from 18 to 24 months old.

Given the public demand for assistance dogs, the average wait time nationally is between 2 to 4 years, says EENP spokesperson Rachel Robertson. However, thanks to an innovative prison program that teaches North Carolina inmates to train the dogs, EENP has trimmed its own backlog to 1 to 2 years.

For Sophia Helme, that could work out well if her family’s recent application for an EENP trainee is accepted. She attends nearby State College of Florida for now, but hopes to study occupational therapy at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers. “I’ve always kind of wanted to go into the medical field,” she says. “I think it’s important to help people.”

The first step on that journey begins with Saturday’s fundraiser, even though it puts the Helmes into a somewhat awkward predicament. “This is very humbling. People have been so kind to us,” says Andrea. “It’s hard for us to ask for help. But this is our daughter."

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