Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood

Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood Review

A heartbreaking, but provocative memoir, "Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood," by Julie Gregory brings to life a little known disease, Munchausen's-By-Proxy (MBP). With chilling details, Julie outlines the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother and her struggle to become her own person.

A consummate actress, Sandy, Julie's mother, reads through countless medical encyclopedias as she invents symptoms and conditions for her daughter. Instructing her to "act sick" for the doctor, ignoring broken limbs and subjecting her to needless procedures is only a few of the horrors Julie encountered. Denied help time and time again by a multitude of doctors, counselors and case workers, Julie's story shows the reader the helplessness and despair of MBP.

Although well written, the book alternates between vivid details and too little information. What were the little white pills Sandy fed Julie? Why was Julie fed matchsticks and how did they affect her? What happened to Grandma Madge or Julie's two siblings who died shortly after birth? Where is Charlie now, and the foster children who grew up under Sandy's care? Further, the book fails to give the reader a true conclusion, leaving the reader wanting to know more.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about MBP and its particular form of child abuse.

Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood Overview

A young girl is perched on the cold chrome of yet another doctor’s examining table, missing yet another day of school. Just twelve, she’s tall, skinny, and weak. It’s four o’clock, and she hasn’t been allowed to eat anything all day. Her mother, on the other hand, seems curiously excited. She's about to suggest open-heart surgery on her child to "get to the bottom of this." She checks her teeth for lipstick and, as the doctor enters, shoots the girl a warning glance. This child will not ruin her plans.

Sickened

From early childhood, Julie Gregory was continually X-rayed, medicated, and operated on—in the vain pursuit of an illness that was created in her mother’s mind. Munchausen by proxy (MBP) is the world’s most hidden and dangerous form of child abuse, in which the caretaker—almost always the mother—invents or induces symptoms in her child because she craves the attention of medical professionals. Many MBP children die, but Julie Gregory not only survived, she escaped the powerful orbit of her mother's madness and rebuilt her identity as a vibrant, healthy young woman.

Sickened is a remarkable memoir that speaks in an original and distinctive Midwestern voice, rising to indelible scenes in prose of scathing beauty and fierce humor. Punctuated with Julie's actual medical records, it re-creates the bizarre cocoon of her family's isolated double-wide trailer, their wild shopping sprees and gun-waving confrontations, the astonishing naïveté of medical professionals and social workers. It also exposes the twisted bonds of terror and love that roped Julie's family together—including the love that made a child willing to sacrifice herself to win her mother's happiness.

The realization that the sickness lay in her mother, not in herself, would not come to Julie until adulthood. But when it did, it would strike like lightning. Through her painful metamorphosis, she discovered the courage to save her own life—and, ultimately, the life of the girl her mother had found to replace her. Sickened takes us to new places in the human heart and spirit. It is an unforgettable story, unforgettably told.


From the Hardcover edition.

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