Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood

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Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood

A young girl is perched on the cold chrome of yet another doctorâ€™s examining table, missing yet another day of school. Just twelve, sheâ€™s tall, skinny, and weak. Itâ€™s four oâ€™clock, and she hasnâ€™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 onâ€”in the vain pursuit of an illness that was created in her motherâ€™s mind. Munchausen by proxy (MBP) is the worldâ€™s most hidden and dangerous form of child abuse, in which the caretakerâ€”almost always the motherâ€”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 naÃ¯vetÃ© of medical professionals and social workers. It also exposes the twisted bonds of terror and love that roped Julie's family togetherâ€”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 lifeâ€”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.

Country	USA
Author	Julie Gregory
Binding	Kindle Edition
Edition	Reprint
EISBN	9780307490926
Format	Kindle eBook
Label	Bantam
Manufacturer	Bantam
NumberOfPages	322
PublicationDate	2008-11-19
Publisher	Bantam
ReleaseDate	2008-11-19
Studio	Bantam

Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood

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