Crowdfunding for Therapy Dog

Erika Gomez refuses to let epilepsy define her life. Right now, the cheerful 20-year-old said she simply considers it a road block, albeit a big one, that has lately included doctor and hospital visits, medication, and even surgery.

But she is driving toward a solution, and to help fuel her journey, family and friends have set up a campaign on the crowd-sourcing website GoFundMe. com to help her pay for treatment and, they hope, for a therapy dog.

“There’s no telling where her financial need is going to end,” said Betsy Hughes, whose daughter Kailey Hughes is a close friend of Ms. Gomez. “We would like to build this as much as we can, to give her the cushion so that she stops worrying about that, and she can focus on getting better.”

Ms. Gomez, a 2014 East Hampton High School graduate, was diagnosed with epilepsy in April 2014. She has struggled with the illness over the last two years and had to withdraw recently from SUNY Plattsburgh when it got worse.

On May 12, as she was walking from her job at Sneakerology across the street to Citarella in East Hampton, Ms. Gomez had her most recent seizure. She fell to the ground unconscious, sustaining numerous severe facial cuts. Two of her front teeth were knocked out.

When Ms. Gomez regained consciousness in the hospital, according to Betsy Hughes, she asked the doctors to not repair her teeth because it would be too expensive. Ms. Hughes, who had accompanied her to the hospital, insisted the surgery take place.

Ms. Hughes and Gary Dworetz, the co-owner of Sneakerology, who collaborated on the GoFundMe campaign, said that Ms. Gomez and her family now live “in a constant state of intense worry and high alert.”

“She’s always been this incredibly friendly, bubbly, energetic, and happy girl,” Ms. Hughes said. “She’s not happy with the effect this has had on her, but it really hasn’t squashed her spirit. That makes us want to help her all the more. She’s pretty special.”

The campaign has raised more than $17,000 so far, with donations coming both anonymously and from friends, relatives, and other names familiar to the family. Through her sister, Kathleen Gomez-Chaves, Ms. Gomez said that while she has had to put her dreams of college graduation and independence on hold for now, “this is just something temporary while we figure out how to control [the] seizures.”

In a recent Facebook post, she thanked those who have donated. “I’m so grateful to come from a community where we all treat one another like family,” she said.