Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood
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- ISBN13: 9780553381979
- Condition: New
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Product Description
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, emaciated, and weak. It’s four o’clock, and she hasn’t been allowed to eat anything all day. Her mother, on the additional 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 made in her mother’s mind. Munchausen by proxy (MBP) is the world’s most hidden and treacherous form of child abuse, in which the caretaker—nearly permanently 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 quick scenes in prose of scathing beauty and fierce humor. Punctuated with Julie’s actual medical records, it re-makes the bizarre cocoon of her family tree’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 like that roped Julie’s family tree together—including the like 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 learned the courage to save her own life—and, ultimately, the life of the girl her mother had establish to replace her. Sickened takes us to new places in the human heart and spirit. It is an unforgettable tale, unforgettably told.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Although I sympathize with Julie Gregory for the unmerciful childhood she was forced to suffer, I establish her book to be disconnected and dull. Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy is a cruel disease which epitomizes the extent of child abuse that can be inflicted upon a child lacking intervention by social agencies. It seems impossible to judge that a caregiver, most especially a mother, can intentionally cause such pain and agony.
I wanted to see Julie Gregory press charges against her mohter, bring her to examination, have a jury convict her, and see her being hauled off to jail (for life). Sandy Gregory is a “sick ticket” and needs to be haulted in her ongoing rampage of continuing abuse.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
I was hoping for a better-written, more insightful tale. It was okay, but not a keeper.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Oprah needs to recommend this book, then have the leader come on the show and give her a whoppin’ for writing trash. Julie Gregory could have had something with substance, but after the first 100 pages,she was all over the road and really lost it. The copies of the letterd and medical charts cannot be viewed (too tiny) and she wrote in a “fiction” style. Don’t waste your time.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
I was nervous to read “Sickened” as the bizarre disorder of ‘Munchausen By Proxy’ is an appealing and twisted piece of abnormal psychology, but, I was disappointed with this book overall. Although Julie Gregory has a compelling tale to tell, I felt her book was overly detailed with wide ‘filler’ material and was brimming with unnecessary details; ultimately building this book dull and a long read.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
While I sympathize with the leader’s upsetting tale, I was disappointed in the book as a whole. While parts of the tale are really told in plain detail, most of it is a whiny diatribe. It also skips around way too much. One minute, the child is 3. The next, she is 13. While her mother did have some major problems, Julie or Julia as some of the medical records show rumor has it that did have a minor heart problem. That is never settled, but seems to have been brushed aside and disregarded by the leader as she grows older.
Additional than her mother taking her to doctor after doctor in search of answers to her elusive health problems, it doesn’t really mention much that her mother did to make her sick, which is what the title suggests. What were the small white pills? My guess would be nitroglycerin because they are agreed sublingually and cause a massive headache due to dialiting the blood vessels. But where would she have gotten them?
What was with the matchsticks that she gave to Julie to suck on? Like so many things mentioned, this is never clarified either. Also, what about Julie’s two siblings who died before long after birth? They are only briefly mentioned and no details about them, not even names, are agreed.
I establish it appealing that Julie’s mother got worked up over seemingly minor things, but didn’t seem to care when she did have something seriously incorrect such as a broken wrist.
As an animal lover, I had to smile about all the rescues the family tree took in, but it saddened me that not all were properly cared for. I felt for Julie’s dad until he let the dog die in the fire. Or, so the mother said, if one can judge anything she ever said.
What ever happened to Grandma Madge? She was just simply written out of the tale.
I am a few months older than the leader and grew up in Montana. I had to chuckle when she mentions the size of the Fantastic Falls airport. If she thinks that is tiny, she’d be in shock to see Butte’s. I also remember the Sweethearts magazine. One of my uncles used to give them to people as a joke.
Julie doesn’t seem to like to be forced to have horses and do 4-H. But, sometimes she seems to like Skipter’s Barr. But, why did she go riding in her skivvies? I like riding bareback, but never had the desire to do it in my drawers.
I also establish it appealing that both of Julie’s parents had negative relationships with their own parents and as they got older, called them by their first names rather than mom or dad. Julie does the same, at least with her mother.
The book seems to be one of the latest trends, unknown people writing a book about their horrific childhood as a way to get even with their abusive parents.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5