MARC Record from harvard_bibliographic_metadata

LEADER: 03049cam a2200289Ia 4500
001 012559370-8
005 20100831160751.0
008 050120t20042003nyuaf 000 0 eng d
010 $z 2003052405
020 $a0553381970 :$c$12.00 ($17.00 Can.)
020 $a9780553381979
035 0 $aocm57455925
040 $aMCU$cMCU$dOCLCQ$dBAKER$dXY4$dYDXCP$dB2A
050 4 $aRC569.5.M83$bG74 2004
082 14 $a616.85/82239/0092$aB$221
100 1 $aGregory, Julie,$d1969-
245 10 $aSickened :$bthe true story of a lost childhood /$cJulie Gregory ; foreword by Marc D. Feldman.
250 $aBantam trade pbk. ed.
260 $aNew York, N.Y. :$bBantam Books,$c2004, c2003.
300 $aix, 244 p., [8] p. of plates :$bill. ;$c21 cm.
520 $aA young girl is perched on the cold chrome of yet another doctors 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. Sickened 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.
520 $aMany 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 indelible scenes in prose of scathing beauty and fierce humor. Punctuated with Julie's actual medical records, it recreates the bizarre cocoon of her family's isolated double-wide trailer, their wild shopping sprees and gun-waving confrontations, the astonishing naiveté 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.
520 $aThrough 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.
600 10 $aGregory, Julie,$d1969-
650 0 $aMunchausen syndrome by proxy$xPatients$vBiography.
988 $a20100827
906 $0OCLC