Sickened

Description

A remarkable memoir that speaks in an original and distinctive Midwestern voice, rising to indelible scenes in prose of scathing beauty and fierce humor. 

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.

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.

Punctuated with Julie’s actual medical records, Sickened 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.“A painful but wonderfully written memoir that should create greater awareness of a bizarre disorder… Keen self-awareness, a sharp eye for details, and an original, poetic voice.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“This story of unfathomable child abuse is told with remarkable wit, compassion, and courage. It’s a work of beauty from a beast of a childhood.”
–Augusten Burroughs, author of Running with Scissors and Dry

“Like some Diane Arbus photograph come to life, Julie Gregory’s Sickened offers us a portrait of quintessential American Disturbos in all their tender, heinous can’t-look-and-can’t-look-away glory. A miraculous book by a woman whose very survival is itself a miracle.”
–Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight

“Set in a southern-culture-on-the-skids world reminiscent of J.T. Leroy, Sickened is written with a lyrical directness that is both riveting and horrific. Julie Gregory reminds us that those who find the courage to slay the dragons of their past and stop the cycle of abuse are the true heroes of the world.”
–Ann Magnuson, actress, singer, writer

"A stunning account by a courageous woman who journeyed from the depths of hell to reclaim her own power and worth. Julie Gregory casts an extraordinary beacon of healing. You will be hearing a lot about this one.”
–Alan Cohen, author of I Had It All the Time

"A born storyteller with perfect pitch, Julie Gregory guides the reader through this surreal form of cruelty, in which the ultimate weapon is the scalpel, with originality, gusto and heart-stopping courage."
–Sylvia Fraser, author of My Father’s House: A Memoir of Incest and of Healing

"Gripping self-disclosure by a remarkable young woman . . . Sickened will surely and finally impact the proper diagnosis and treatment of children caught in the terror of MBP."
–Chris Monaco, Ph.D., Director, Childhelp USA National Child Abuse Hotline

“This searing and beautiful memoir represents a genuine triumph
of the human spirit.”
–Marc D. Feldman, M.D.JULIE GREGORY grew up in southern Ohio. She is now an expert writer and spokesperson on Munchausen by proxy and an advocate
in MBP cases. A graduate student in psychiatry at Sheffield University, England, she currently lives in the United States.Featured on “Dateline” and “Today,” Julie Gregory’s courageous memoir brought a wide audience to a topic that had previously languished in the shadows. The first book by a survivor of Munchausen by proxy (MBP), Sickened describes both a dark history of abuse and a remarkable triumph in mind, body, and spirit.

Writing in an unflinching, arresting voice, Julie recalls the bonds of terror and destruction that imprisoned her from childhood through her early adult life. Her mother subjected Julie to years of procedures and medications. Within this frightening cocoon of mental illness, Julie’s mother thrived on rage, leaving Julie prepared to sacrifice herself if that’s what it took to win her mother’s happiness. Despite the astonishing naïveté of doctors and social workers who could not see the truth, Julie at last embarked on an inspiring metamorphosis, finding her own way to healing and safety.

The questions and discussion topics that follow are intended to enhance your reading of Julie Gregory’s Sickened. We hope they will enrich your experience of this unforgettable and important memoir.

1. What parallels did you notice between Julie’s family dynamic and that of her parents? In what ways was abusive behavior perpetuated across generations? Why is it often so difficult to end these destructive cycles?

2. Compare the various ways in which illness, both mental and physical, plays out in the memoir. Are there common threads between Dan’s side effects from Agent Orange and Sandy’s obsessive collecting? Would an inventory of the family’s symptoms contain any themes?

3. In what way is racism a reflection of Sandy and Dan’s paranoia and quest for supremacy? Or do you view their hatred of nonwhites as a cultural phenomenon? How does Sandy’s insistence on bleached-blond hair factor into these assumptions based on appearance?

4. What gender lines were drawn for Julie as a child and teenager? What was she taught to assume about men, especially the role of older men, and sexuality? Who had the most power in the Gregory household?

5. Do you believe that Sandy took in children and veterans for financial reasons only, or were they essential to her psychopathic illusions? When she forces Julie to inflict punishment on the foster children, what truths about the nature of sadism are revealed?

6. In his foreword to Sickened, Dr. Marc Feldman writes that though the disease was named in 1951, it still remains a subject of contentious skepticism in many medical circles. Why is it so difficult to accept? Why did Julie have to explain MBP to her counselors, rather than receiving the therapeutic treatment she needed? What does this resistance indicate about the nature of diagnosis and healing in general?

7. Malnutrition was a primary factor in Julie’s de facto illness, leading to symptoms of anorexia nervosa later in her life. What does the concept of hunger represent to her? Why is Sandy intolerant of Julie’s attempts to help Tina nourish herself?

8. Julie says that truth is whatever your mind believes. What does this memoir demonstrate about how our self-perceptions are shaped? How easy was it for her to believe that she was neither attractive nor smart, and that only her parents could protect her from the ridicule of society?

9. Discuss Julie’s writing style, especially her use of imagery. Books were her bridge to healing; how has she used language to create a bridge for others?

10. Do Julie’s parents appear to have any genuine religious faith? How is Julie eventually able to feel a sense of wonder and joy about God?

11. What does Julie’s experience indicate about the safety nets in place for other abused children? Does our society offer a better alternative to parental abuse?

12. How has the book changed your perspective on parenting and MBP in general? What solutions for discerning the truth and keeping children safe could you propose now?

13. Through medical records and photos, Sickened presents the evidence of MBP itself. How might you have perceived these artifacts had you not read the book? Do they speak for themselves?

14. What sets Julie’s story apart from other memoirs of childhood trauma? In what ways does it enrich the collective experience expressed in this genre?

The part I hated most was the shaving.

I mean, if you’re a twelve-year-old girl, how much hair can you have on your chest? But they’d lather me up anyway and run a new plastic Bic between my barely-there breasts. They needed me smooth and hairless so the little white pads would stick to those points constellated around my heart and record my beats. And while they were preparing, I’d hover above myself, intent on studying the nubby white ceiling tiles, imagining a room where I lived, inverted, upon the ceiling, away from the clutter of our trailer, away from the hospital–just floating in pure, white peace.

The scent of the shaving cream pulls me back down from the ceiling: It’s the same kind Dad used. Every day before dawn, he’d erupt in violent heaving and crawl off to the toilet trying to peel the Agent Orange from his lungs. Sometimes the sounds of his retching would come out the mouths of those elusive figures in my dreams, the worlds between sleep and wake merging seamlessly for a few groggy moments. He’d usually shave after he puked.

In an unspoken understanding, the examining room nurse folds a giant pile of cream from the can onto her palm, so much that as she smooths an inch-thick trail down my chest, our naked skin never touches.

Eventually the tide of Agent Orange would ebb and he’d lean dizzy in the doorway and say, "I’m selling Buicks, Sissy. Get it? Selling Buicks? Buuicck. Buuuuiiick." Then he’d cackle and brush the back of his meaty fist across his mouth.

The nurse picks up a new blue-handled blade and runs it neatly down my sternum, slicing out another clean, pink row.

And what do you do at seven in the morning but laugh with your big, lumbering father, who’s pretending the doorway of the bathroom is a lamppost and that he, leaning on it like a drunk, is hawking Buicks in his best barker accent?

And then they’re done. The white pads have been spread with a clear magnetic jelly and pressed on to six different locations. Their wires run into one larger river of wires that flows from under my sternum down my abdomen, emerging out the zipper of my pants like I had some elaborate cable TV pay-per-view setup in there. The rubber-coated electrodes feed into a tape recorder that fits snugly into a rectangular leather harness; it looks like a purse. I wear the strap over my shoulder, and while my seventh-grade life ticks away, so do the heartbeats that go with it, right into the box.

For starters, I was a sick kid. Beanpole skinny and as fragile as a microwave souffle, I bruised easy and wilted in a snap. Kids in school used to walk straight up to me and ask point-blank if I was anorexic. But I wasn’t; just sick. And Mom bent over backwards trying to find out what was wrong with me. It wasn’t just that I had a heart problem. It was everything rolled into one, bleeding together with so many indistinguishable layers that to get to the root of it was impossible, like peeling off every transparent layer of an onion, and when I got old enough to peel the onion myself, every layer made me cry.

I was conceived in the sickly womb of a sickly mother–who starved herself and in turn starved me. She was highly anemic and blind with toxemia at the time of my birth–the result, she explained, of high blood pressure cutting off the circulation to her eyes. I was pushed into this world premature at three pounds seven ounces, an embryonic little bird, glowing translucently, and when they slapped me I didn’t even yowl. They thought I was dead. The doctor, holding my bluish body upside down by the ankles, took one look at me and said, "My, what big feet she has." And then I was ushered into an incubator where I lay, as all embryonic creatures do, waiting to hatch into the real world, outside the bubble. After that, my health only balanced precariously on the edge of a "Let’s get to the bottom of what’s wrong with this kid" kind of existence.

There were early nose-‘n’-throat flare-ups, loud belching that defied my delicate appearance, pesky and persistent migraines, swollen tonsils that fluttered a plea for removal whenever I said "Ahhh," a deviated septum blamed for my mouth hanging open to breathe, and elusive allergies that forever deprived me of sustenance from the four basic food groups. As we got closer to pinning down my mysterious illness in the cardiology department, Mom moved into micromanaged health care with the logistical vigor of a drill sergeant.

"Look, dammit, this kid is sick, all right? Just look at her. And so help me God, if she dies on me because you can’t find anything wrong with her, I’ll sue you for every cent you got." Mom’s face was long, her eyes diving into slits, and she had that little white blob of thick spit that always played on her bottom lip whenever she got upset. Her voice trailed after any doctor who said no more tests could be done, stalked him down the corridor, sliced through the silence of the hallway.

"Jeesus Christ," she hissed, returning to the examining room, "I cannot believe that incompetent son of a bitch."

"Don’t worry, Mom. It’s okay. We’ll go find another one."

This is how I offered reassurance, by telling her we’d just keep going.

"Look, I’m trying to help you with this, sacrificing my life to find out what the hell is wrong with you. So stop fucking it up when we get in here by acting all normal. Show them how sick you are and let’s get to the bottom of this, okay?"

"Okay."

We lived together day in and day out–me, Mom, Dad, little Danny, and then later, the foster kids–but Dad never knew I was getting my chest shaved. He was summoned by Mom with a set of "decent clothes" and the boxed white loafers only when a demonstration of fatherly support was paramount at a hospital. Otherwise, he was left to his back-to-back reruns of M*A*S*H, his red-stained pistachio fingers and mounds of empty nut carcasses piled high on his belly.

We lived in a double-wide trailer then, stuck on the dead end of a dirt road in a backwoods patch of Ohio; a wild, woolly green, lushed-out part of the country with roller coaster hills that held their breath in a Deliverance kind of way. I swear you could almost hear the banjos folded faintly into the breeze.

My parents had hauled their black velvet painting of Jesus crucified, with the 3-D blood from the crown of thorns blobbing down the side of his head, all the way from Arizona and then through the six other places we’d lived until we settled in the holler of Burns Road.

Our living room was outfitted with an early imitation-wagon-wheel velour sofa set, and Jesus hung against the burnt-orange velvet wallpaper, which had been pasted over wood paneling, so that the grooves showed through as darkened, hollow stripes. Sticky shag (as if someone had vacuumed up honey) swayed like undulating seaweed across the floor. Miniature concrete farm animals dotted our yard in pairs and groups–white baby chicks, mini cows with pink udders, roosters a-courting hens, a donkey in a sombrero–and when we were in town for my doctors’ appointments, Mom always kept an eagle eye out for additions to her barnyard collection.

I remember my dad then, manateelike; big, soft, scrubbed clean as if he’d just been run through a car wash on a La-Z-Boy gurney. Naked white skin stretched taut over an enormous belly, the pallor of sick clay. No hearing. No sight. No opinion. The dark living room of our trailer held nothing—except sporadic uproarious laughter to the endless hijinks of Hawkeye and Hunnicut.

Once, when I was seven, I lay in bed drifting to sleep when Dad roared, "Siiissy! Siiisssssy!" I leapt out of bed, thinking "FIRE," and tore down the hall in slippery full-footed pajamas.

"Fix me some toast, will ya?" Dad’s fingers placidly folded over his chest, thick calves propped up on the snapping-turtle hinges of the recliner footrest, he never took his eyes off the set.

Aside from trips to the doctor, we mostly stayed home in that trailer on the dead end of a dirt road, and there was a great gulf between how we really were and how we looked when we got out. I have a photo from when I was about eleven and Danny, my brother, was just four, when we drove up to Niagara Falls for a vacation. We’re in a fake wooden barrel that looks like it was careening over the side of the falls, and we each wear a smile that couldn’t have been more plastic than the water swirling around us. I am naturally blond by Clairol, wearing the latest in JCPenney pastels, and exuding happiness.

But happiness is relative when you’re twelve, sitting in a chrome-on-steel examination room, goose bumps giving you that plucked-chicken look, with a nubbly paper sheet tucked into your clammy armpits. Until now the answers had run like whispers over the hills just ahead of us. A little intermittent tachycardia here, some Marfanoid habitus there. Never anything code-red enough to get me completely, legitimately diagnosed. But they kept looking. Because Mom was positive that the answer was right there in my heart. A mother knows these things. She’s the one who’d see me go ashy in the face, she’s the one who’d take my skipping pulse, and she’s the one who watched the weight fall right off my bones, all the while my height skyrocketed. So that’s what flamed us onwards, after the answer. It was right there, just always right there before us, waiting to be sussed out, and then it would all make sense. And in some ways, she was right. But time might be running out for me, so when Mom insisted on another test and they wouldn’t do it, well, that’s when we’d get the hell out of there and try to find somebody who knew what they were doing.

My mother, Sandy Sue Smith, was married off by her mother at the tender age of seventeen to a man in his fifties named Smokey, who kept a carnival act on the edge of town. Smokey was a small, tight man with crisp tabs of sideburns that sliced down from under his curled black cowboy hat. He had trick riding horses, horses trained for the carnival ring, and he taught Sandy Sue to do outrageously dangerous stunts with names like "The Apache Flyaway" and "Lay Over the Neck." After the stunts, Smokey would strap Sandy to a pegged wooden wheel, set it spinning, and throw nineteen-inch-long knives at her. And then there she’d be, having survived the ten sharp blades that jutted haphazardly from the cracked wood around her, smiling brightly with one leg cocked, like a model, a dainty hand flipped above in triumph. This was before she had me but I’ve seen the pictures and they are stunning: She stands tall upon the bare back of a wild, white horse blurring across a field, with a ruby-tangerine-streaked sky as the backdrop.

In another photo Smokey is snapping a twenty-five-foot braided leather bullwhip out toward Sandy, who stands pinned to the horse trailer with an expressionless face, the whip side-winding like a snake about to coil around her throat. They wear matching outfits of black-and-white yoked satin shirts with pearl snap buttons, silver conchs sewn down their trouser seams, and belt buckles the size of serving platters.

How Sandy ended up with Smokey goes something like this: She has a mother and a father and an older brother named Lee, who is a little off, wink, wink. The father ignores the family, keeps his attention on a gun collection stashed throughout the house. The mother, Madge, is from a clan of West Virginians who sleep with their own brothers and sisters and have cross-eyed children to prove it. Sandy is occasionally left with men that do terrible things to her in a shadowy basement. The father with the guns is replaced one day by another gun-toting father–only this time with a badge. He makes Sandy ride behind him on his motorcycle with his hand curved around and resting on her bare leg. He takes her to remote fishing holes with tall grass and the occasional fisherman who looks the other way. Two years later, Sandy walks in from school to find this new dad has stuck a gun in his mouth and blown himself apart right there on the living room sofa.

Madge has a tenth-grade education and has never worked a day in her life. There is scarcely ever food in the house. Sandy’s given no lunch money and by the time she’s fifteen, she’s famished. Sinking in on herself with malnutrition, she collapses on one of the floors she scrubs with ammonia after school. In the hospital she lies with pelvic bones poking through thin white sheets, while they feed her three meals a day. When she’s strong enough to be discharged, Madge gives her to Smokey, a man who lives down the road with horses and a farm, a man who can take care of her as well as he does his own cattle. And she climbs into his truck with going-to-girls’-town enthusiasm, lured by the promise of her very own horse. Off she goes with a man. It is all she’s known.

Years go by with Sandy strapped to the wheel: white leather, showgirl’s smile. Coal black hair separated down the middle into leather tunnels that lace up the side in Indian squaw fashion, accentuating the trace of Cherokee blood that gives her the high cheekbones and blushed full lips. She runs alongside as her gift horse tumbles into a full gallop, grips its long, flying mane, and then, clutching the horn, springs into the saddle with a panther’s grace, pushing to balance her way up until she is standing tall while the spectators cheer. Still running at a breakneck speed, she plunges under the horse’s belly and thrusts her arm out in performance-style splendor, ta-daaaaa. This is the Russian Death Drag. She has captured an audience and, for the first time in her existence, something other than a life, a body full of pain.US

Additional information

Weight	8.6 oz
Dimensions	0.6200 × 5.4900 × 8.2200 in
Imprint	Bantam
Format	General Trade
ISBN-13	09780553381979
ISBN-10	0553381970
Author	Julie Gregory
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	BIO026000, FAM001010
Subjects	foster care, disease, mental illness, autobiography, non fiction, true stories, biographies, motivational books, memories, bios, memoirs, abuse, autobiographies, narrative nonfiction, biographies and memoirs, nonfiction books, child abuse, biography autobiography, books memoirs, munchausen by proxy, mbp, munchausen syndrome, Memoir, childhood, BIO026000, mental health, psychology, inspiration, relationships, family, health, biography, advice, inspirational, medical, biographical, FAM001010, motivational, medicine, survival, nonfiction, true story, illness