With Haleigh vibrating away in her vest, Janea
set about her chores, folding laundry in the next
room. A few minutes later, she set down the
laundry basket and returned to unhook the tubes
and slip off the vest. She’d planned to take
Haleigh to the bedroom, change her diaper, put
her to sleep. This was Janea’s daily routine as her
daughter’s primary caregiver.
But on that day, for reasons no one knows,
something went wrong. Janea froze in her steps at
the sight of her daughter, her face purple and her
body blue.
Janea shrieked in horror. She’d only been gone
two minutes. Maybe three? It’ll be OK, she told
herself as she struggled to remove the vest.
A former EMT and firefighter, Janea had seen
this kind of thing before.
“I knew for sure my daughter was going to die,”
she recalled.
Janea administered CPR and screamed out for her
firefighter husband to call 911. Haleigh’s pulse
was beating more than 200 times per minute.
Then came the flashing emergency lights. Sirens
in the driveway. People in the living room. A
hazy blur of activity. Then the emergency room
and a chair in a paediatric ICU hallway at the
Medical Centre of Central Georgia in Macon.
“You never know,” Janea said quietly, reflecting
on the worst moment of her life, “how long a
minute is until you see your child dying.”
Brian holds Haleigh's hand as the seven-year-old
receives insulin for diabetes.
Before she began cannabis oil treatments,
Haleigh was having 200 seizures a day. Now she
has one or two.
3: A plea for help
Janea grew up an extroverted, fun-loving
cheerleader at MacEachern High School in Cobb
County. After graduation, she followed her dream
of becoming an EMT and a firefighter.
Janea is strong, physically and mentally. Ask her
about what she saw her life becoming, and she
talks about a simple love of hanging out with the
boys at the fire station. Being on a team. Doing
exciting work that helps other people. Being the
only girl in the boy’s club.
She met Brian on the job. They become friends
first, talking on the phone and laughing about
work. Eventually the pair started dating.
“He kept asking me to marry him, but I would
always say no,” she said, an ebullient Southern
lilt ever present in her voice. They did eventually
marry. And they were both surprised, four years
later, after unsuccessful efforts to have children,
when Haleigh came along.
“I was always told I couldn’t have kids because
of my diabetes, so we’d given up. Well, all of
sudden, once we quit trying, here came Haleigh.”
Everything appeared normal when Haleigh was
born in July 2009. It wasn’t until her daughter
was six months old that Janea noticed Haleigh’s
progress lagged behind other kids her age.
She wasn’t trying to sit up or reach for toys. Janea
was concerned, but the doctors didn’t seem
worried. Nonetheless, CT scans were ordered.
Then MRI’s.
That’s when Janea learned Haleigh might have
had a stroke. There was frontal lobe damage.
Then the seizures started, little ones at first.
She went on meds. More seizures followed. Then
more meds, more seizures.
Janea quit her job to care full time for Haleigh.
She spent what little spare time she had searching
online for a miracle. But Haleigh just got worse
and worse. Until that day Janea found her lifeless
in the vest.
Nobody can say exactly what happened to
Haleigh that night, or why she stopped breathing.
But the prognosis looked grim. Doctors told
Brian and Janea that Haleigh might be brain dead.
As the minutes turned to hours, Janea sat in that
hospital hallway and prayed. And she came to a
decision. If their daughter made it, she told Brian,
she was taking Haleigh to Colorado where she
could receive medical marijuana treatments.