Seventeen medications during the past four years have failed to quell the haywire electrical signals in Haley Osborn’s brain that send her young body into convulsions dozens of times a day.
The 7-year-old climbs into bed at night with her service dog, Sofie, a border collie mix trained to push an alarm with her nose when the seizures start, summoning Haley’s parents. The dog then gently lays her body over Haley to protect her from hurting herself.
Now Jill and Arthur Osborn of Georgetown would dearly love to have their daughter try marijuana, after hearing that it helped children in Colorado with severe, unrelenting seizures. But more than a year after voters approved legalizing marijuana for medical use in Massachusetts, Haley and hundreds of other children with severe epilepsy are still waiting to get the drug.
