Once I started reading this book I couldn't put it down. The story is very compelling in itself. his book does not flinch from reality. The book starts with the childhood of the mother. Her mother came from a world where incest was usual and it was not uncommon for the babies to be born deformed. It then launches into the life of Julie, the author of the book. Her mother is determined that Julie is fatally ill. She drags her from doctor to doctor, coaxing the child on what she should tell the doctor. The child is not aware of what she is saying. She tells the doctor that she has a headache when she is too young to know what a headache is. The child is starved and overworked so of course she always looks sick. The saddest part of the book for me is when her parents burn their double trailer leaving their dog inside. They then abandon their children. Julie is left with a legacy that never leaves her. Is she actually sick? She know longer knows.

Though Munchausen's by Proxy is a terrible disorder that causes parents to inflict grievous pain and suffering upon their trusting and powerless children, I simply was not impressed with this book. Just another "look how ****ed up my upbringing was, but by god I'm a SURVIVOR!"

There are so many survivors of so many diverse kinds of abuse, and it seems like everyone wants to write a tell-all now. Some are excellent -- e.g. "The Glass Castle" -- and some are so deliciously horrifying I couldn't stop reading --e.g. "Running with Scissors" -- but "Sickened" was redundant and padded with too many lame metaphors and not terribly compelling a read. I did read to the end because I was curious about the fate of the family, but could not identify with any of the characters. I found the experience vaguely disappointing.

Quite an amazing book, as there are very few first-hand accounts of Munchausen's By Proxy. Gregory unflinchingly relates the horrible abuse she suffered at the hands of her parents and the humiliations she endured. This is a page turner that reads like a novel, which makes the fact that this is a true account even more horrifying, illuminating, and moving.

I want to give Julie Gregory the biggest hug, knowing full well I can’t comfort all the hurt now but I can’t help it after reading this amazing book. The stories are so crazy you’d believe they were fiction, and the fact that they’re not is utterly heartbreaking. And I now have a fear that I’ll have a patient that is a victim of Munchausen by Proxy and not notice it or know how to approach it…

I am not gonna lie. There were parts of this book when I literally needed to stop reading for a moment to get out from shock and to understand that those things are really happening in the world we're living in.
I was cheering for Julie each time she was trying to overcome the system she was forced to live in and getting sad when she got (again) discarded and misunderstood.
Although I'm really happy for the ending!

{as always, how many stars to you give a memoir such as this?!}

I remember learning about this horrible illness at uni and could barely comprehend then, that what some mothers could do to their children. The bond of mother and child is a very special one and almost all mothers would do anything to ensure the health and happiness of their children. But not all. Some go to great lengths to make their children sick and drag them from Doctor to Doctor to gather useless (and harmful) medications and request unnecessary surgeries.

Such is the case with Julie and her mother. As far back as she can remember, she was sick. She was even constantly told she was ugly and wouldn't amount to much. One of her first memories was getting a treat from her mother - a matchstick that she chewed and sucked like a lollipop. And so began her life of real and fabricated illnesses on a merry-go-round that she eventually was able to step away from. Not all similar cases are so lucky.

This book was an amazing yet horrifying journey. The gruesome detail through each stage of Gregory's life was expertly woven into the overall story, and it really exposed the horrible abuse she suffered. From beatings to lies horrifying surgeries, each event is laid out in a way that truly captures her childhood. I admire Julie Gregory's ability to write and her courage to share her story, face her abuse and continue to bring awareness to Munchausen by proxy.

This book was incredible, I couldn’t put it down. Julie Gregory lived through the most heartbreaking, horrific childhood, and through sheer determination recovered herself. And not just recovered herself but determined to save others: another little girl from her own mother specifically, and by becoming a psychiatrist herself, many more children/adults generally. It’s an astounding story written with such a keen eye for observation and words that build pictures like poetry. I can’t help but wonder if she wrote a sequel because I want to read more!

This is one of those books where I feel a bit guilty for not liking it. All said, it was a relief when I finally finished it. I'm not sure if it was massive caregiver fatigue getting in my way as I work with helping people recover from trauma (though that has never happened before) or if it was some fault of the book. That said, Gregory's life was horrifying and because of that I wanted to like this book more than I did, but I didn't. I know some people are challenging the veracity of Gregory's memoir, and I do want to say some things in Gregory's favor. First, children tend to want to see their parents as good people because they see their parents as extensions of themselves, so for Gregory to have gotten to this point where she would write a book about the horrific abuse that she experienced, well, she must have had good reasons. Second, Gregory never claims to have forgotten the abuse or have recovered memories she lost, which are red flags for false memories. So I tend to believe Gregory.

I think I was expecting more of a focus on Manchusen by Proxy, a condition where a caretaker, usually the mother, fakes medical symptoms in her child to get attention. In some ways this book seemed segmented into two stories, visits to the doctor and then the horrific abuse that happened at home. It's told as it unfolds from Gregory's POV at the age she was when going through her ordeals, with little insight on how she looks at it now from an adult's perspective and or education about how what her mother was doing fits the pattern for MBP. And the result was that it felt rather voyeuristic. And at times Gregory seemed so focused on painting a picture of what was happening that it just got confusing, such as when she spliced the word "car battery" into "car batter" and then breaks to describe how her mother wails "REE" that left me confused and re-reading that sentence over and over trying to figure out what a car batter (I even Googled car batter) is and what a ree is until I put it together. I read a lot, and I have never seen something like that before.

If anything it left me with more questions about MBP, though I could easily map out the abusive dynamics of the family as that is very familiar from an academic standpoint. And in the end I felt it was more of a story of a severely dysfunctional family with MPB on the side, rather than tackling MPB front and center. I guess you could argue how to do one without the other, but there it is.

3.75

Książka pełna brudu i okrucieństwa ujęta w narrację nieswiadomego dziecka. Julie świetnie opisuje przebieg tej patologii od strony ofiary. Bardzo często czułam obrzydzenie, ale jednocześnie fascynację. Manipulacja zastosowana przez matkę była na tyle skuteczna, że bohaterka była pod jej wpływem jeszcze wiele lat po ucieczce z rodzinnego domu. Zakończenie obrazuje czytelnikowi cel kryjący się za wydaniem tej książki - zemsta i chęć ocalenia innych.

2.5

Two stars.



You'd think something with this much drama would manage to avoid being boring, but it wasn't the case.

Munchhausen's and Munchhausen's by Proxy are fascinating syndromes. One of my favorite novels has a great example, but it's kind of spoilerific: n  Sharp Objectsn

Unfortunately, Julie Gregory's story is not especially compelling. It reads more like a diary without the benefit of any adult perspective or introspection. It's very much "here's a list of things that happened - doctor's appointments, child abuse, tests, countless medications." The drama with her parents read more like episode of Jerry Springer. I understand her relationship with her parents directly tied into the medical side of things, but the crazy drama definitely overshadowed Julie's experiences with Munchhausen's by Proxy.

The language was so...over the top I guess is the best word? Embellished? It makes it hard to connect with the story at its core. There's only so much screaming and abuse you can read about before it all becomes a wave of blah. You have to care about the people and emotions involved, and I never got there.

I liked the inclusion of pictures of Julie's medical records, that was a nice touch. But ultimately, I wanted Sickened to be more interesting than it was.