COUNTDOWN BEGINS!

November 1st is only two days away (feels like just yesterday that I was enjoying the summer months). November is EPILEPSY AWARENESS MONTH and I am over the top excited at the events Kaitlin's Cauze has planned. Much thanks to my parents for the hard work they have put into this- many hours working on my website, printing out posters and business cards, and helping me come up with idea of things to do.

I hope you are as excited as we are to take the opportunity to talk about epilepsy and bring more awareness to this disorder!

Looking for experiences...

Kaitlin's Cauze would love to hear from you! During the month of November Kaitlin will be posting a blog each day and would love to share your story! If you would like your story shared please email it to: kaitlinscauze@comcast.net Feel free to share anything and everything you want about life with epilepsy.

Also, Kaitlin's Cauze is still accepting pictures for the two photo galleries on Kaitlin's Cauze website. For the Let's Celebrate album, Kaitlin is looking for pictures that show you or your loved one LIVING life despite epilepsy. Kaitlin wants to show the world that LIFE can HAPPEN even with epilepsy!

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Kim

Balloon Release

On November 1st Kaitlin's Cauze will kick off epilepsy awareness month by releasing 24 balloons. 24 is a big number for me because it represents the number of months I've gone without a tonic clonic seizure. Well... truthfully by November 1st it will only be 23 months but I'm adding the extra balloon BELIEVING I'll make it to 24 months. :)

I am inviting a few of my friends to join me for this, afterward my parents will take us for pizza to celebrate the start of a month long campaign to bring epilepsy awareness to as many people as possible.

We are using eco friendly materials, which means the balloons will be biodegradable. We will not be attaching strings/streamers to them either. We will place a small fact card (made of recycled paper) inside the balloon as a way to spread awareness.

Kaitlin's Cauze invites you to do a balloon release in your area. Let's make this an event to remember. If you do participate, please feel free to take pictures and send them to me so I can post them on my website/blog. You can send them to: kaitlinscauze@comcast.net

A lot of really cool things have been happening this month and we are really excited by the support that many of you are giving. We're all in this together!

Shout it if you have to, but step up and be heard!

My name is Kaitlin and I HAVE EPILEPSY!!!!

Echo News...

Today Echo and I had our very first agility lesson with an experienced trainer. Agility is a team sport, meaning we have to work together to get through the course. Today we learned that Echo likes chicken as his reward (he is highly food motivated).

The first thing we learned was clicker training. Clicker training reinforces the good behavior such as "focus", "here", and "wait". These are all commands that I will use with Echo in agility. It teaches Echo to follow my voice and hand signals. This is important to learn because during agility we will be running the course together and he will have to follow my voice commands and my hand signals so he knows what obstacle to do.

The second half of the session was working on some of the equipment. Echo showed his stuff on the tunnel, pause table, triple jumps, and weave poles. Our trainer was quite pleased with how well he did.

In case you haven't read my previous post, I would like to train Echo in agility with hopes of winning and donating some of the money toward epilepsy research and awareness.

If you're going to dream, you may as well dream big!

Love,

Kaitlin