| Product: |
Sickened - Julie Gregory |
| Date: |
20/08/04 (172 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Eye-opening
Disadvantages: Legs-crossing
Julie?s father Dan is, to use a slangy parlance, a bit bonkers. He calls her Sissy, for one, but that?s not the worst of it. He prefers to live his life lying on the sofa, watching wall to wall M*A*S*H, with a ?lung full of Agent Orange? he brought back from Vietnam, and hawking into his hand and slinging it at the wall if no-one?s around to wait on him with tissues. He is certified as having sanity problems, which got him invalided out of ?Nam.
But he?s not the problem relative Julie has to report on in this autobiography. Nor is it her maternal grandma, who would take Julie fishing, stopping off on the way home to point Jesus Himself wandering the mountains, before deliberately crashing the car for the thrill (she favoured hitting red things).
Instead, her mother Sandy is. Sandy was brought up with no education, no money, lots of abuse from men as soon as she was of marrying age... She avoided that latter by being given to a circus man down the road, before he died, being about 40 years older. But put Mom and Dan together, and soon the resulting child, Julie, is born.
Yet right from the start the child is poorly ~ premature, not strong enough to cry at birth, and put in an incubator. She recovers, obviously, and grows up as near a regular child as she can be, albeit painfully skinny. However there continues to be a catalogue of medical problems with her. From headaches, fevers, coughs and travel sickness, to persistent tonsillitis. It?s all there, as a catalogue, with proof of every visit to a doctor, and referral to expert, and test, and repeat test, and dissatisfaction at the test?s ambiguous result, and move to new doctor.
And practically all of it was avoidable, and practically all of it was caused by that parent *not* certified insane, being ill in the head with Munchausen?s Syndrome by Proxy.
First picked out as a particular psychological problem in the 1950s, Munchausen?s Syndrome is where someone need
s continuous assurance not of their health, but of their illness. It is a bizarre condition, where the sufferer can to all intents and purposes induce ailments, so they remain under the attention of medical practitioners, and can pass years of testing with no particular complaint being diagnosed, much less cured. They seem to be reassured they?re not well, thus making some part of their mind happier knowing that all is not right, it will get better, and at least it?s not their fault, when all expert opinion can bring about no cure.
MBP is the even stranger variant, even more recent in its first identification, where someone is insisting someone else, nearly always a mother her child, is ill, to such the extent that the daughter or son does actually ail. It is, as this most eye-opening autobiography reveals, an incredibly strange, if unintentional, form of child abuse.
The young Julie suffers the aforementioned tonsillitis ~ or does she? ~ for several years, continuously being taken from school to go to a new appointment. In the waiting room she will be reminded to adopt an ill pose, with a special way of sitting on the examination couch. Any time when she would prefer to say ?No, I don?t have a sore throat *every day*, just yesterday,? is met with evil stares, and a strong reproach. Taken to meet a new specialist for testing, she forgets to hold her bladder for the test beaker, and goes before the appointment. As the registration can go no further, she gets a Chinese burn on her leg, as Mom is so disappointed the promise of attention has been broken.
Julie?s style in this autobiography is so matter of fact yet subtle, that one can almost go straight past the most important sentences. Those that say it?s only the squeezing of the head in front of the doctor that bring on the headaches anyway. Those that say the worry of the daily aspirin seems to cause the migraines in the first place. Those that say that when Julie is allowed a p
roper schooling, she shines, with a reading age of the year above, and so on.
But that?s not going to be of much use in these childhood years. For if there was any doubt this is a trailer trash family, it is removed once a brother is born. To avoid all those horrible ?black? pedestrians the entire car-enclosed family have to take evasive manoeuvres to avoid, they decamp to live in a ?double-wide?, a house-sized trailer in the middle of nowhere. Obviously the country air and so on will aid the ailing child. Or it would, except Sandy has decided Julie allergic to practically all food groups, and so the girl maintains a stick-thin, protein-deprived existence, whilst being employed most days making barbed wire fences round the new property.
Time passes, and Mom creates a haven of built-on wooden rooms, for a variety of fostered children, war veterans, and dogs, which brings some income in. But before long the female half of the family is leaving behind threats from the school of holding Julie back a year unless she gets better, and going back to the city. Once there and the appointment over, they have little to do except shop, and so shop they do. It?s only frustration that the cure hasn?t been handed to them, anyway. Mom certainly wants Julie well, otherwise she wouldn?t make summaries of Julie?s symptoms with the aid of a medical encyclopaedia. Julie certainly wants to be well too, but as we know is practically under pressure to maintain illness.
The style of the book is just right. Theediscerning has been on record as having found no need to ever pick up any autobiography of childhood with either poverty or child abuse (or both) in the background. And he would not exactly rush to savour a book about someone?s medical condition. But ?Sickened? makes up for any amount of ?how I beat cancer?/Bad Ashes preventing better books from getting shop shelf space. Of course it?s not a story one would wish on anyone, but this really is anot
her example of the story being given the ideal narrator. The 250pp go by quickly ~ it?s not a huge read, and for once the editor has done the job properly and made it readable in one session ~ there is none of this repetition of already-memorable detail an awful lot of non-fiction suffers from.
There are segments, too, where the book covers some ground that would appear common to all such books. Those involving more regular child abuse (beatings, being force-fed discarded Kleenexes as punishment, guns), for one. Another example of an odd detail being glossed over is when Julie really does break her wrist ~ she is not believed, and it takes the rest of the day before medical aid is sought legitimately.
The very readable style is only let down in some small aspect, when it does not judge the Mom?s behaviour. This wouldn?t be a problem, except we?re almost invited to make our own diagnoses on what we?re reading ~ and if experts still know so little about MBP, this can only be dangerous. Mom insists the doctor use her first name ~ is this an admission they?ll have a long-term relationship because of this case, or a tiny sign of her dependence on the friendship medical matters gives her? Pages later we read of Mom?s attempts to get Dad on her side in parental issues, and we have to think ?is this cause or effect of MBP??, and probably get it wrong.
That?s just a minor quibble, however (others would be the several Americanisms that don?t translate, such as 4H, some kind of horse school). ?Sickened? is a fine little book. If the reporting of a strange life is your regular read, then you should add this to your must-try lists, or at least advance it to near the top of your bedside pile. If you baulk at autobiographies from young women (Julie was 35 this May) you?ve never heard of, and respond to the latest hit memoir with a ?So bloody what??, this book is still good enough to educate, and provide all a book should.
It?s intellige
nt, clear, highly emotional, nearly poetic in its last quarter, and as the foreword from the specialist says, unique in its point of view ~ no other Proxy has written a book about such a life.
The diagnosis is fine, then. There?s nothing wrong here. You?re free to go.
?Sickened? is published by Century in the UK, priced £12.99, with the ISBN number 1-844-13442-3, and comes out in paperback in September. It?s been a big hit, and rightly so. Recommended.
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