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Stanley Chamberlain III gets a kiss while he poses with his dog, Pepper, a five-month-old Rottweiler and German shepherd mix that he got at the Havre Animal Shelter in December. Chamberlain, who is holding a Pizza Hut fundraiser Thursday to help pay for his fourth brain surgery, is training Pepper to be his service dog.
A fundraiser will be held Thursday for a community member who has gone through three brain surgeries and needs help funding his fourth surgery next week in Cleveland.
Stanley Chamberlain III, 29, has gone through these three surgeries to help reduce the seizures he experiences due to his uncontrolled epilepsy, which started when he was 14 years old.
"He would have one to three seizures a day," Chamberlain's mother, Barb Chamberlain, said about her son's condition that she said worsened as he got older.
Chamberlain said her son's first surgery left him seizure-free for a year, but it became progressively worse as he started experiencing many seizures again.
"The second surgery did nothing," she added, but the third surgery went great, she said, and his seizures decreased considerably.
The fourth surgery is scheduled for May 31 and is being done because of hydrocephalus, otherwise known as a build-up of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain. This kind of build-up can occur after a brain injury or surgery and can be fatal if not treated, the Brain and Spine Foundation website says.
Chamberlain said her son will receive a shunt, a thin tube implanted in the brain to drain away the excess cerebrospinal fluid, during the next surgery.
Her son has been doing well, Chamberlain said, except he tends to get many headaches from the hydrocephalus.
Now, her son is focusing on training a service dog, Pepper, that he adopted from the Havre Animal Shelter.
"It was too expensive to buy a service dog," Chamberlain added, so her son decided he was going to get a dog and try to train her himself.
She said she is also appreciative of the support her son has received from the community, especially Quality Life Concepts Inc., an organization that provides community resources, such as services for individuals with disabilities and their families, and A Plus Health Care, a home care and staffing service, which helps her son about an hour a day by taking him on outings and walks.
The fundraiser will be held at Pizza Hut and 20 percent will be donated from each order, when mentioning Chamberlain's name.
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