Event Description
The Miles for Kyle 5K is a road race usually held in Swampscott, Massachusetts consisting of a 1 Mile Walk and 5K run every October! This year would have marked the 15th annual event, and we are very much determined to continue this extremely special event for Kyle, our family, and our community of runners who look forward to participating each and every year.
This year you can choose from a 5K, 1 Mile Walk or a "Distance Challenge". Selecting the "distance challenge" will allow you to track your total distance achieved throughout the course of the weekend. Maybe you set yourself a goal to run, walk, or hike, 10 miles over the weekend, you can use the mileage tracker through our interactive scoring platform to help track all those miles.
Kyle’s Story: 15 years ago, Miles for Kyle (MFK) was created in an effort by our amazing family to assist us in providing the necessary neurological and surgical treatments Kyle required at the Cleveland Clinic in 2007. After Kyle’s successful surgeries, the event continued in raising awareness and providing $100,000 to the Cleveland Clinic for other families going through similar traumatic experiences. To this day, the event continues to raise awareness for pediatric epilepsy surgery and SUDEP (Sudden Death from Epilepsy). In 2016, MFK re-directed it’s efforts, in began donating all funds raised through MFK to the Chelsea Hutchison Foundation https://chelseahutchisonfoundation.org
Interested in learning more? See the details below.
About Pediatric Epilepsy
The CDC estimates that there are 3.4 million people with epilepsy nationwide, of which 14% are children, in a school of 1000 students this means about 6 could have epilepsy. Miles for Kyle is intended to raise awareness for Pediatric Epilepsy and the options available for the possible control and prevention of further seizures and risks they present.
Medications
For the treatment of seizures, the FDA currently approves several different types of anti-epileptic drugs. The goal is to achieve the best possible control without the adverse side effects that medications sometimes cause. For most children, it is possible to stop seizures altogether with standard medications.
Ketogenic Diet
Another treatment option for children whose seizures remain uncontrolled, even with medication. The goal, via a high fat, low carbohydrate, adequate-protein diet, allows the body to replace glucose as the brain's energy source with ketones, sometimes leading to a reduction in the frequency of epileptic seizures.
Epilepsy Surgery
Once considered a last resort, epilepsy surgery has become a very safe and precise treatment for certain pediatric patients in whom medications/diet have proven to be ineffective. This highly specialed surgery involves the safe removal of an epileptic area of the brain which is giving rise to seizures.
Vagus Nerve Stimulation
The American Academy of Neurology now recommends this procedure for children per the age of 12 years old that have partial seizures that do not respond to mediation or diet, nor are candidates for surgery. Stimulation of the vagus nerve may reduce seizures by up to 50% in about half of patients who undergo this procedure.
Seizure Response/Service Dogs
Response dogs provide vital support to patients with epilepsy such as calling ng or altering for help, bringing emergency medicine to patients and bracing in the event of a fall.
