Chronic illness shattered this teen's life. Her service dog helped get it back

Lilla Lanivich and her service dog, Lopez, do everything together. While Lilla works, paints, sleeps, and learns, Lopez sits quietly and attentively at her feet.

Her rainbow-dyed hair and colorful nails match his rainbow-dyed tail and cream-colored fur.

"I do rainbow makeup, I do rainbow outfits, I love color," says Lilla. "I think that it makes me able to show my personality a little bit."

Lilla talks about how Lopez has helped her deal with multiple chronic illnesses in her podcast Lopez the Rainbow Tailed Service Dog, this year's Grand Prize winner for middle school in NPR's Student Podcast Challenge.

Our judges praised her story for its open and honest portrayal of a young person facing the challenges of debilitating illness and pain.

"While Lilia's peers are starting to experiment with new forms of independence and privacy, she is having to forgo a lot of that," says Jonaki Mehta, one of our contest judges this year and a producer on NPR's All Things Considered. "And I loved how she showed that Lopez is helping her regain some of that independence back and some of that privacy back."

The Student Podcast Challenge, now in its sixth year, has involved more than 90,000 students from all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. Lilla's podcast, along with our high school Grand Prize winner, to be announced in September, was chosen from nearly 2,000 entries.

"That summer, that one day changed everything"

In her podcast, Lilla describes a time when Lopez saved her from falling during one of her non-epileptic seizures:

"One time, I was standing in the kitchen about to put away groceries. Lopez pawed me and I jumped on the couch. Before I knew it, I was waking up after passing out."

Lilla, a 14-year-old who lives in Rochester Hills, Mich., north of Detroit, has been diagnosed with POTS, PANDAS, lyme disease, a connective tissue disorder, and long COVID.

"Lilla's been sick since she was born," says her mom, Margaret Lanivich, who has been managing her daughter's health for Lilla’s whole life. "It just seems like every time that one thing would get better, we would just get swamped with another bunch of stuff and then have to kind of sort through that."

Lilla had surgery when she was 8 to try to help, but other issues kept popping up. When she was 10, Lilla recalls, she woke up one day and could no longer walk. The doctors weren’t able to tell her why.

Her dad, Iain Lanivich, remembers it vividly. "I have video of her literally the day before," he says. "Lilla used to play sports … used to engage in a lot of different things. And then all of a sudden it was just gone."

She lost mobility for 55 days, and suffered another episode that lasted 70 days a few months later.

Lilla's been homeschooled since 2019, using a wheelchair most of the time, and her parents monitored her constantly — she says she couldn't even brush her teeth by herself. She had lost her independence overnight, and was rapidly losing social outlets.

Her parents turned to online support groups, seeking anything that could help their daughter regain some normalcy. One answer came up over and over again: Get a service dog.

Lopez joins the Lanivich family

Lilla tells how, once they selected a puppy, they had to find a trainer and undergo almost two years of intensive training with Lopez. The first year of his life was just basics, then they graduated to more advanced things, like seizure detection.

Lilla describes placing a sterile gauze pad in her mouth just before and during her seizures, then the trainer would introduce them to Lopez.

Now, Lopez can smell when a seizure is coming and, when that happens, he paws her, telling her to go sit down while he gets help.

"As a baby and still to this day, Lopez loves resting his head on my wheelchair," Lilla says in her podcast. "He's very goofy, snuggly and playful. We became best friends so quickly."

Having Lopez in the house has changed, not just Lilla's life, but her parents' as well. "It's everything," says Lilla's mom, Margaret. "It's the whole reason … why I wanted to try the service dog thing to begin with: So she would have freedom and she could have privacy."

Not every day is the same, but with the help of Lopez, Lilla says that this summer, she's learning to appreciate the bright spots whenever they happen, and adds she's feeling great.

"I've been able to do things the past few weeks that I never would've thought I'd be able to do again," she says. "Like walk the Detroit Zoo! I was able to do that which is still crazy to me."

And this fall, she's back in school for the first time in five years, another thing she can't quite believe yet: "Everything just seemed so out of reach for me. But I actually have hope now, which is incredible and crazy."

She says she's taking it day by day. And Lopez will be right by her side, every step of the way.

Edited by Steve Drummond
Audio story produced by Janet Woojeong Lee
Visual design and development by LA Johnson