Some of us on staff here at DCist are unrepentant video game nerds, so we couldn’t help but notice this posting yesterday on the gaming site Penny Arcade about Marissa, a 9-month-old Annandale, Virginia, resident who was diagnosed with a rare pediatric condition called Infantile Spasms (IS). Marissa’s dad, being a gaming fan like us, sent the guys at Penny Arcade an e-mail asking if they could take one of Marissa’s three stuffed bunnies named Fairfax — a tool Mike is using to spread awareness of IS — to their upcoming convention in Seattle to spread the word about her condition. They agreed, of course.

Why the bunny? “She had it with her in her hospital crib which looked like nothing more than baby jail during the day, and I clutched onto it for dear life at night. She had so many wires, cables, gooey electrodes, and other lines attached to her at any given time, I couldn’t just scoop her up and cuddle on her — the bunny was our lifeline to each other. “

Apparently Seattle is just the latest stop on Fairfax the bunny’s travels. The stuffed animals also have visited Boston and New York City, spreading the word about IS, a type of epilepsy experienced in infancy that causes clusters of seizures and can lead to development problems. Marissa’s father, Mike, started the site Marissa’s Bunny as a forum to get to know other people dealing with condition. However, Mike told us, “with my daughter as sick as she is, I took the idea and ran way too far with it.”