SARDs/IMR — Awareness Central

Suzanne and I are proud parents of our miniature dachshund, Oscar, and we are the creators of this website.

We created www.SARDSAwareness.org to help other dog parents obtain helpful and useful information about SARDs/IMR.

We would also like to disclose the following:

• First and foremost, neither Suzanne nor I are veterinarians.
• We are not educated in veterinary medical science.
• We have no vocational experience in the veterinary services industry.
• We are not alumni of Iowa State University (ISU), nor do we have any affiliations with ISU.
• We are a non-profit site and are currently in the process of acquiring our tax-exemption status from the I.R.S.
• We place no revenue generating advertisements for the purpose of raising revenue for SARDSAwareness.org.
  • We do, however, place product links for Internet affiliate programs such as Amazon.com and CafePress.com to raise donations for Iowa State University’s research program for SARDs/IMR.
  • 100% of all proceeds from those links will be donated to Iowa State Univerisity’s Companion Animal Fund.
  • We will provide full disclosure of all transactions for these affiliation programs and associated donations.
• We have no commercial interests.
  

Like you, we are one of thousands of pet owners whose pets have been afflicted with SARDs/IMR.

In March of 2009, our Oscar was diagnosed with SARDs.  Succinctly, the prognosis from the veterinary ophthalmologist was that Oscar would be blind, but that he could still live to be a happy dog.

When SARDs/IMR was explained to us, we were told that not much was known about these conditions, and that there was no cure for the oncoming blindness.

However,  Oscar’s veterinary ophthalmologist did advise us of an experimental treatment utilizing human immunoglobulin that was delivered intravenously.  Unfortunately, for reasons unbeknownst to us, we were not given any additional information about who or what facilities could provide such treatment.

With what little information we came home with, we spent the entire evening looking up various SARDs/IMR and human immunoglobulin treatment links on the Internet.

After a signifiacant amount of time time spent reading through every link that appeared on Google, we finally landed upon a press release made by Iowa State University.  The press release is available here.

That press release led us to what we needed most:  contact information for Dr. Sinisa Grozdanic (pronounced “Growz-dan-ich”).

We emailed Dr. Grozdanic and really expected no reply.  But to our surprise, he was very responsive, and was kind enough to share some presentation materials that he had recently created, as well as a paper published through the Elsevier publications company in 2008.

(The presentation materials are available in the Documentation section of our website, while the Elsevier publication is commercially copyrighted material, and is not available for download from this site).

During the weekend after Oscar’s diagnosis, through email communications back and forth with Dr. Grozanic, we were able to better educate ourselves about SARDs/IMR and eventually came to a quick decision to take Oscar to Iowa State Univerisity to see Dr. Grozdanic for IVIg treatment.

Since our return, we have been in regular contact with Dr. Grozdanic, keeping him updated on Oscar’s status, and asking more questions, and trying to obtain more information about SARDs/IMR.

We have been personally affected by SARDs/IMR, and we are passionate for the cause of Canine SARDs/IMR research and treatment.

Thus, SARDSAwareness.org was born.

We intend to utilize our energy, via this medium, to help spread the awareness of SARDs/IMR, and to try to provide as much financial support possible through donations and fund-raising.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email us at info@sardsawareness.org.