Haleigh ' s hope - Janea Cox ’ s unexpected journey to the front lines of Cannabis
Advocacy By Adam Kincaid Atlanta Journal-Constitution 5.3.17 . ( http :// specials . myajc . com / haleigh /) Her husband eyed the TSA inspectors nervously while Haleigh sat silently in her wheelchair , a floppy red bow on her head , staring out at the world with big brown eyes .
Janea Cox , her husband Brian , their 7-year-old daughter Haleigh and their chocolate Lab Kala left their Forsyth home in December 2016 for their semi-annual trip to Colorado . They flew into Denver and made their way toward Colorado Springs in a rental car , squeezing the three of them , a wheelchair and the dog into the small , four-door sedan . A handicap-equipped van would have been better , but the economy ride was what they could afford . The family checked into a budget hotel and went to sleep ; not that they ever sleep well , or for very long . Young Haleigh was up through the night , as usual . She has epilepsy so severe she requires constant oversight . For most of her life , her young brain hasn ’ t been seizure-free long enough to develop normally . So she gets around in a wheelchair , receives nourishment through a feeding tube and is barely able to communicate . Haleigh is a prisoner in her own body . She also has type one diabetes . Kala is a service dog specially trained to check blood sugar levels by smell and alert handlers of spikes — to do what Haleigh cannot do for herself , to speak out when she needs help .
These family trips are not fun . They stretch the Coxes to their financial limit . And they take everything Janea and Brian have just to get to the offices of the Flowering Hope Foundation , where botanist Jason Cranford dispenses his specially formulated cannabis oil , Haleigh ’ s Hope , named after his special client . Janea believes it is the only thing that has kept her daughter alive . The cannabis oil isn ’ t the only thing named after Janea and Brian ’ s daughter . Her name also appears on the law — Haleigh ’ s Hope Act — enacted in 2015 , which permits registered patients in Georgia to possess up to 20 ounces of low-THC oil . But because it remains illegal to produce or dispense the oil in Georgia , the Coxes must go to Colorado to buy it . The next morning , Brian packed the bags and the chair and the dog back into the rental car and the family returned to the Denver airport where , as calmly as she could , Janea Cox , 35 , quietly committed a federal crime by smuggling 10 twoounce vials of the oil out of Colorado .
Before Georgia ’ s medical marijuana law went into effect , Janea and Haleigh lived in Colorado for a year while Brian stayed in Georgia to work . He would visit every month or so .
2 : A life sentence Three years earlier , in January 2014 , something happened that changed Janea ’ s life forever .
On that particular evening , she did the same thing she did every night . She slipped a medical vibrating vest onto 4-year-old Haleigh ’ s motionless body to loosen up the mucus that routinely built up in her lungs . She plugged one end of a black vacuum hose into the vest and the other end into a boxy plastic machine . When Janea flipped the switch , the machine sprung to life , sucking air up from around its vents and pushing it pressurized into the hose and vest . An instant later , Haleigh began to vibrate .
Haleigh was diagnosed with intractable epilepsy when she was eight months old . Intractable is a doctor ’ s word for untreatable . She took a daily regimen of more tranquilisers and anticonvulsants than is recommended for a grown adult . And still Haleigh suffered more than 200 seizures a day ; every five minutes or so , day and night . She was paralysed by her seizures , unable to build the neural pathways that would allow her young brain to move a leg or an arm , or to speak . All of her baby teeth had to be removed so she wouldn ’ t suck them into her lungs as they loosened or bite her tongue off .