Customer Reviews

Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood

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The first time I had heard of Munchausen by Proxy was in my Abnormal Psychology class. I couldn't believe that something like this actually existed. How could someone do this to their child? It is when a caretaker (often a mother) will keep his/her child sick or try to prove to others that the child is sick to gain attention for themselves. Unfortunately many cases go unnoticed because of how easy it is to hide. "A recent study indicates that when a case of MBP is finally recognized, up to 25% of the sickened child's siblings have already died---most likely earlier victims of the perpetrator."

Julie has always been a sickly child, for as long as she could remember. Her mother and grandmother often ran her to the hospital for food poisoning. There were very strange things that would go on in her family. Her grandmother would take her on fishing trips at the age of 3 or 4. She would tell her to hold on to something in the car, and get in a minor car accident. She would do this often, and it would always end the same. The grandmother would "disappear" and Julie would wander off, while crowds gathered, and someone would take her home to her mother. Her grandmother would come back, looking around for her lost granddaughter.

Her father had strange habits as well. He was a war veteran, who would spend days in front of the television, watching endless hours of M.A.S.H., and would yell at anyone who walked in front of the TV. He would only talk to you during commercials.

Her mother took her to endless doctors, only rushing her away to another one when they couldn't find anything wrong with her. When that didn't work, she kept her from eating and didn't give her lunch money. Julie was weak and malnourished. She got migraines quite often. When she did, Sandy (her mother) gave her a white pill to put under her tongue. Somehow, the migraines only got worse. When Julie stayed in the hospital so the doctors could take a closer look at what was happening with her heart, the sickness disappeared like magic. Doctors were baffled and her mother surprisingly wasn't happy about the good news.

I felt tremendous sympathy and compassion for this little girl and wondered why she didn't leave earlier. When she finally did leave (they weren't keeping her under lock and key) it surprised me that she came back. She had been humiliated, put down, beaten, forced to eat tissue, and many other things. I have never been the victim of abuse, so I don't know the feelings of attachment and dependence that she connected to her abusers. There were times that I almost put the book down because I had a hard time digesting the fact that this actually happens to children.

It was difficult to read, especially at the parts where no one believed Julie, and some people turned against her because they thought that she was telling lies about her mother. Sandy was an exquisite actress. She played the role of the perfect mother to a tee, horrified that something could happen to her baby, and that maybe Julie only had a little while to live. The fact that she got out without getting killed was astonishing.

I would have liked to see an epilogue, and whether or not she confronted her mother. I would also like to know her mothers thoughts and the allegations against her. I would also like to know the details of such things like the "white pills" that were used to take away her migraines and what her mother was doing to her to make her sick.

This should be recommended reading so people will be aware of this not commonly known, life-threatening illness.

Julie Gregory was abused as a child. She was abused in one of the most undiscussed ways a child can be violated. Julie was the victim of her mother's mental illness. Her mother suffered from Munchausen By Proxy Syndrome. Julie's mother, Sandy, would feed 3-year-old Julie books of matches and tell her they were lollipops. She would give Julie pills that caused blinding migraines, all the while, taking Julie from doctor to doctor insisting Julie was seriously ill. At the height of her illness, Sandy was trying to have open-heart surgery performed on 12-year-old Julie. And when Julie tried to tell a nurse and her school friends what was happening, no one believed her.

Julie and her brother also endured physical abuse. They were beaten and Julie was constantly starved to make her appear ill. "Sickened" is Julie's heartbreaking, but uplifting story.

I was appauled and horrified by the treatment that Julie suffered. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to live with the knowledge that there was nothing wrong with you, but you were at the whim of a deranged mother. This book was an amazing tale of courage and spirit. If you are an abuse survivor, this book will be very hard to read, but it is definitely worth it.

I highly recommend this work.

Jim Pierce,
The darkness that permeates SICKENED: A MEMOIR is riveting. There is not the detachment of watching a car wreck. Rather, we feel the tortured confusion of the young girl convinced by her mother that she is ill despite being healthy. What is only now becoming clear in our society is that child abuse is not always a physical act. It is not even a malicious act. It can take so many forms. SICKENED is a unique book not only because of the unique type of abuse it chronicles, but because as a reader you really do feel the turmoil. It is the kind of writing that captures you, pulls you in, and doesn't let go. Rarely can writers accomplish this, particularly in the area of abuse chronicles. That is why the few exceptions (MY FRACTURED LIFE, RUNNING WITH SCISSORS, NIGHTMARES ECHO, and SICKENED) are such riveting books that you really can't get enough of. As someone who reads several books a week, I consider myself lucky when I find just one that hits with the impact of SICKENED, MY FRACTURED LIFE, NIGHTMARES ECHO, or RUNNING WITH SCISSORS. To have found four is true opulence.

"Sickened" is an autobiography about the victim of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MBP). MBP is a mental disorder in which a person (usually a mother) inflicts injury on another (usually a child) in order to gain attention and praise. In this case, the author's mother was the predator. It's hard to believe that anyone's childhood could be this awful. Ms. Gregory's childhood was not full of love, but of horrible abuse - such as being starved, given medicine to make her sick, subjected to rigorous and invasive medical tests and procedures for no reason, and being forced to work on the family farm for hours every day while trying to recover from surgery. Not only was her mother abusive, but her father was as well, beating her and (somehow worse) forcing her to eat his used Kleenex. It's shocking to read about how greedy and selfish they are, about the mother taking in foster children and elderly people for the money and then abusing them.

The author does a wonderful job of explaining the disorder, gives a lot of insight into her childhood and information about her family. The book isn't long and is relative fast-paced. It's equally interesting and horrifying. She definitely has a gift for writing. The book flows well, but does slow down a bit when we get to the part about her going to college, and living in her house of mirrors. Somehow, it doesn't seem that she got into much detail about when she found out about MBP her exploration of condition. She doesn't talk much about her therapy, either.

I'm disappointed that there's not much of a follow-up on the book. What happened to the mother? Has she been prosecuted? Is she still taking in foster children? The author has a website, but the link to the "update" page is broken.

This is a very personal and educational book. I highly recommend it to those who are interested in reading about mental conditions.

I usually read fantasy, but when a friend loned me this book, I decided to try it. I couldn't put it down for the next two days!
The story is tragic, and heart-breaking and you don't want the things that happened to be true, but at the same time, you want to keep reading to find out what happens. The book ends on the last page, but the story does not, and I hope dearly that Julie Gregory publishes another of her memoirs.

I read this book some time ago and what I remember was a girl that had to look out for herself. Her Mother was disturbed and maybe thought she cared for her daughter but in a very extreme way she didn't care for her at all. This is the second book I have read about Munchausen by Proxy and it is a very difficult disease to read about as I am sure it is very difficult to experience.

I actually bought this book a few years ago and it's taken me until now to finish it, because the book was so disturbing I had to keep putting it aside. I read a lot of true crimes and controversial stories and don't normally become disturbed by a book, but Julie Gregory's mother is one of the most frightening real-life abusive mothers I have encountered in a book since the mother in "Sybil" which I read many years ago.

Although most reviews focus on the Munchausen by proxy angle of this book - a disease where a mother, in a bid for attention from medical personnel, lies that her child is ill and even physically abuses or overmedicates the child to give credence to her stories - Julie's mother Sandy did many other terrible things to her daughter as well. A consummate actress, Sandy made up symptoms for her daughter (and urged her or sometimes even ordered her under pain of punishment to "act sick" for the doctor), fed her drugs, had a needless heart catheterization performed on her (and would have had open heart surgery done if the doctor hadn't finally balked), all while starving Julie half to death in such a manner that even Julie didn't realize she was being malnourished. I shudder to think of the physical and mental effects of a growing child being fed nothing but sugary cereal and cake batter for protracted periods of time because she's supposedly "allergic" to everything else. Sandy also beats and emotionally abuses Julie and her other children, including foster children entrusted to her care because she's so good at acting the part of the perfect mother in front of authorities. Julie's father, a mentally ill Vietnam veteran, is hardly any better and allows himself to be manipulated by Sandy into performing equally horrific acts on his daughter. Even her grandmother, while acting loving in many ways, enjoys feeding little Julie pills and intentionally getting into car accidents with Julie in the car, just for the attention this brings. This family really put the capital D in "Dysfunctional."

The worst part is that by the time Julie is finally able to escape this horror show, she has been so brainwashed by her mother that she truly believes she is sickly and stupid and is unable to properly feed or take care of herself because no one ever showed her how. That this woman was able to make any sort of recovery, which she seems to have done (at least in the early stages) on her own rather than with any sort of meaningful psychological help, is nothing short of a miracle.

This book gives interesting insights into Munchausen's by proxy syndrome, whose victims, unlike Julie, are often too young to understand or communicate what is being done to them, and sometimes even die from their parent's ministrations before they are able to explain to anyone what is going on. Beyond the Munchausen's angle, this book, like "The Poison Tree", paints a chilling picture of child abuse in general and how it persists for years and even generations, undetected. You can tell that despite her trials and her eventual rage, Julie felt, and maybe even continues to feel, love for her horrible parents in spite of herself. The book indicates that both parents were severely abused themselves as children, shedding light on why they would then abuse their own children, yet hide it and pretend to the public that they were a normal, happy family. It also shows how much people on the outside, including doctors, social workers and even Julie's own school friends, were in denial that such abuse could occur, to the point where they didn't believe Julie when she tried to tell, and missed other evidence (for example, Julie's reluctance to leave the hospital and go home) that was right in front of their eyes.

I got very upset at a review of this book on Epinions that suggested Julie was simply trying to get attention for herself or show that she knew everything and her mother knew nothing, by writing this book. I definitely felt that Julie would have preferred to have a truly happy, normal upbringing and NOT get attention and NOT have to write this book. I hope the telling of Julie's story is able to help both her and other children, or grown children, who might be suffering due to Munchausens and abuse. But be warned: this is a heavy book to read, and like me, you might need to put it aside a few times before you can finish it.

This is a memoir by a woman who survived a childhood of Munchausen by Proxy. Continuously brought to doctor after doctor, Julie realizes that sickness is what procures her mother's love and that her mother will create sickness where none exists if necessary.

This is a dark and disturbing book but I recommend it for anyone who wants to understand the disorder of Munchausen by Proxy.

This is an excellent book about what survivors of Munchausen's by Proxy live with. I especially liked the author's description of how she thought her early experiences were "normal" and how she still felt close to her parents for a while as an adult in spite of the abuse she endured.

I was up into the very late hours reading this. As a mother it was heartbreaking to read. The author shows how strong the parental bond can be even in the worst of circumstances. I anxiously await her next book.