Book Review: "Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood"

I'm going to throw a disclaimer out there right here and now: if you're easily triggered by child abuse, TURN BACK NOW. DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW NOR THE BOOK. This is not a happy-go-lucky read (who would've assumed that anyway, given the title?) -- no, no. This is a horribly harrowing tale -- a heartbreakingly true story -- that will make you sick that a human being could actually inflict this -- ON PURPOSE -- on an innocent child. And not just on one -- MULTIPLE CHILDREN.

This book is about a little known mental disorder called munchausen by proxy, and a mother who took it out on so many innocent children.

Munchausen, in and of itself, is a mental illness that manifests as an individual who will chronically -- pathologically -- feign illness in the pursuit of sympathy and attention. There's a wide spectrum of severity a person might go to the lengths of in this endeavor, but more serious cases will drive an individual to actually seek out medical help for their mystery ailments -- but, unlike a hypochondriac, who doesn't actually have anything wrong with them, the munchausen patient will go to great lengths to manifest specific physical symptoms in order to obtain unnecessary tests, medications, surgery, you name it. Because they find ways to provoke actual symptoms, they're not dismissed in the way hypochondriacs are; rather, they fly under the radar as a doctor will fall for test after test to try and diagnose these mystery illnesses. And as soon as one doctor may hit a brick wall and give up, the patient will just pick up anew with a different doctor and start the process all over. You would not believe the lengths people would go to as a result of this psychiatric disorder.

Now, in munchausen by proxy, this is a disorder that affects a caretaker -- typically, a mother. The difference is that this patient doesn't make themself out to be the ill one -- no, no. This is where hte "by proxy" part of the name comes in. Generally they'll start with a child, usually a very young one who doesn't know any better, and will start to shape them into the sick child they want them to be. They may intentionally injure the child; they might poison them; they might do any number of atrocious things, all to provoke symptoms in what would otherwise be a normal child, but for whatever sick reason, the parent wants to make their child out to be ill and abnormal for their own emotional gain. Some children end up so badly abused in this manner that they end up dying as a result... and it just looks like a medical mystery. The parent starts again on another child. Until a trained professional who knows what to look for spots specific patterns happening over and over with multiple children of a specific parent, the person may easily get away with it unnoticed by the medical profession and never end up so much as persecuted for what they've done, despite all the world of hurt they've so needlessly caused.

The author of this book, Julie Gregory, was one such victim.

The book follows the story of Julie from as far back as she can remember, and even at such a tender age, you start to witness various forms of abuse unfolding and this poor little girl not having so much as a clue as to what's being done to her, or even that any of it's wrong. One of the earliest clues that something is very off with this family: on a very early remembered car trip, her mother offers her a mini sucker from inside her matchbook. Julie comments on her excitement at seeing the double row of suckers lined up in there, but it isn't until she starts describing the consumption of this 'treat' that you realize that, with no uncertainty, this poor child literally IS eating matches and doesn't have a clue that they're not some kind of candy. (And thus we see probably one of the earliest examples of how her mother managed to coerce symptoms out of an otherwise fine child....) As horrifying as that example is? It's only the very tip of the iceburg of what lies between the covers of this book. That was actually a tame example. Without giving too much away in the way of details for those of you who do wish to read the book, the mother DOES go so far as putting her child electively through unnecessary surgery, amongst so many other things. And that's just the MBP end of things -- this isn't counting the other numerous abuses that Julie is forced to endure at home.

So much of my subconscious desperately wanted to believe that this book were a work of fiction, a horror novel, but not real....and every time I had to remind myself that this did, in fact, happen to a real, live, living and breathing human being..... I couldn't help but lose a little more faith in humanity that someone out there could be as horrible as that to another person. And the knowledge that this is just one girl's story -- there's probably hundreds, if not thousands of others out there who've suffered silently at the hands of such torment as well. It boggles the mind to even try to grasp how a person could even live with themself after inflicting such a thing on another human, and yet, the fact that there's a name for this condition goes to show just how many people there must be in the world who're guilty of doing such things. With no pun intended on the title, one can't help but feel a little sick thinking about these things.

This story is terribly unsettling, but eye-opening for sure that there's a problem like this existing in our world that very few people are able to see if it happens in front of them. One can only hope that by telling her story, that Julie's bravery will help others come forward and share their stories as well in hopes that MBP will become a more widely-recognized form of abuse that will not be tolerated if detected, and hopefully many lives can be saved and spared. As jarring of a story as this is, I have to rate it a 5 out of 5 stars, because it's SO well-told to where it puts you right in Julie's shoes, and your heart aches for everything she's gone through.