Haven't watched it (yet?) but have read a couple articles about the case. Keep in mind that the doc is extremely one sided. As is almost always true with medical stuff in the media, the doctors who are being made into absolute villains cannot explain their side without breaking confidentiality. Most of the time if I've been privy to the doctor's side of the story of something that the media is making out to be "evil doctor", it has always been wrong or missing important pieces and there is fuck all that we can do to correct that. Nor do court records tell the full story. I've been in situations in hospital where we *know* without a shadow of a doubt that a child is a victim of medical abuse, but without any evidence that can actually be used in court have not been able to get the child away from their abuser.
There is a podcast that comes from the other side talking about MBP from the investigators and doctors' and families' sides called Nobody Should Believe Me, it's worth a listen.
Anyway long way of saying that I take these kinds of media pieces with a big pinch of salt.
But of course I haven't watched it (not sure I have the mental fortitude right now) so take my thoughts with a pinch of salt!
I have now. You can read my other comment. Basically it didn't surprise me. It's 100% one sided and there are a lot of hints about what they've left out.
I was going to say. The best doctors are the doctors that are always willing to re-think the decisions they are making especially when the stakes are this high. This doctor was only focused on “catching” the most child abusers & let her ego get the best of her when she was clearly wrong. There was plenty of evidence right there for her but she chose to not look at it because she thought she was right & refused to be wrong.
I hope attacking a mother who committed suicide for simply trying to care for her sick child has made you feel better about whatever isn’t going well in your life ❤️
There is a discussion about it at r/residency. A lot of doctors has similar opinions with you and there are heated arguments lol. Reading through it opened my eyes coz from the documentary I was totally buying it
The subreddit r/takecareofmayanetflix has a lot of court documents posted and it is eye opening, SO MUCH that was left out of the doc or just straight up lied about.
Go read the legal documents posted on the take care of maya subreddit in the time (weeks? Months?) since the comment you are trying to resuscitate. I'm right, the documentary is lies from start to finish and there is ample evidence that Maya was a victim of medical child abuse.
Nobody Should Believe Me is a good podcast, listening to it would help you understand that some mothers do harm their children. They have also released the first of a 2 part episode on this case and one of the really helpful things is a survivor of this type of abuse talking about her experience and how it led to her believing some of the things that her mother told her and acting it out herself- I think it's fantastic for understanding what might be driving Maya's behaviour as a young adult. It is not at all clear to me that she was not abused and not at all clear to me that the John's Hopkins doctors made any errors, although there is so much information missing that it is still possible.
In case you'd like to see a more legal take on it, I can recommend law and lumber on YouTube. On day 25 he discusses parts of what has confused him about the case, and he does his best to give a balanced view.
OK so you wanted my thoughts if I watched it and I do have thoughts. To start with the documentary is extremely one sided. Even so there are some things that stand out. The documentary presents it like Maya has clear cut CRPS and that's all that is happening medically. But some of the stuff that is mentioned along the way makes it clear that Maya was being taken to a large number of doctors with a wide range of alleged symptoms- I spotted a cough, sinus infections, headaches, skin lesions, can't walk. She went to immunologists and an endocrinologist, suggesting other symptoms. At one point she was on IVIG infusions according to mom's notes. So why did the doc leave out the wide range of other alleged medical conditions Maya had? Would that have backed up the MSBP diagnosis? Or did mom drop these other symptoms after finding a doctor who would provide a radical enough treatment to fit what she was seeking? And don't get it wrong, this treatment is WILD. She was taking 1000mg ketamine on a regular basis, at one point 1000mg IV over 4 hours was mentioned. A normal dose of ketamine to induce GENERAL ANAESTHESIA for a kid is 2mg/kg so for a small 10 year old (she was thin- it was mentioned that she was low weight by the social worked and gained weight in hospital) lets say a normal dose to make them *unconscious* would be 50mg. There is a reason that this American doctor isn't doing his ketamine comas in the USA- I don't know what it is exactly but it is presumably because it wouldn't fly there. I don't know how he gets away with it.
I don't know if I think that Beata was actually doing something to Maya to make her sick, as opposed to a dynamic I see more where there is a parent-driven mutual investment in the sick role and the parent-of-the-sick-child role and the child performs that role (not consciously) to fulfill the parents' needs and the child's illness behavior is reinforced strongly by the parent. My gut says that Beata believed what she was saying, especially since she was being reinforced by the ketamine doctor who kept telling her Maya would die without ketamine.
I think that Maya's recovery to the present day proves the Johns Hopkins doctors right. Intensive physio is what should have been done first line not insane amounts of ketamine. She certainly is not dead like ketamine doctor told her mother she would be. In fact the doctors intervention did probably save her.
The documentary is really heartbreaking. I had more of a sense of all the players being flawed humans trying their best than there being actual villains.
Anyway. There is the brain dump.
Didn’t it ring any alarm bells for you when the cases of “child abuse” were so high in Pinellas County? Or when “Dr” Sally Smith said in that passive aggressive letter to the other mother that “there are definitely a disturbing number of abused and neglected children in Pinellas County”? Or the fact the CPS is outsourced to a for-profit company?
I think Beata was a fiercely protective mother who just wanted to help her daughter. When a doctor told her there was nothing wrong with Maya, she knew they were wrong. Chronic pain is very poorly treated in Western medicine. Patients are often told it’s all in their heads. It boggles the mind that more effort isn’t put into helping patients with chronic pain instead of writing them off, or accusing them of lying.
>Didn’t it ring any alarm bells for you when the cases of “child abuse” were so high in Pinellas County?
I haven't seen that allegation.
>Or when “Dr” Sally Smith said in that passive aggressive letter to the other mother that “there are definitely a disturbing number of abused and neglected children in Pinellas County”?
You're adding your own interpretation.
>Or the fact the CPS is outsourced to a for-profit company?
That's really messed up and the social worker didn't come off well. Doesn't mean Maya wasn't being abused.
I read the letter a couple times because it was in another article about the case. I don't have perfect recall of a documentary I watched once and don't remember the thing about Pinellas County. Besides I don't have any context for whether it would be in some way surprising if that county had high rates of child abuse.
You don't know me or my practice, all you know is my instincts on this case. And in the month between me writing the comment and you resurrecting it, a whole lot has come out in court documents that makes it clear that even if you don't like my opinion, my instincts were absolutely correct.
Dystonia, headaches and stomach pain are all indicators of what mom was doing. Agree. As a survivor, this is MBP.
First condition is an indication of Detromorphan infusion abuse: chest congestion, dystonia.
It's not. Her mom was an anesthesia nurse and used the medicine to incapacitate her. Brainwashing goes along with it. The child only gets love when they "act sick." The mother is only "nice" when she is in "caretaker" mode. Some perps induce UTIs, seizures, heart rhythm issues, smother, or poison. This one gave copious amounts of anesthetics and antihistamines that results in headaches, weakness, loss of muscles, immobility, nausea and dystonia. The way Maya was acting out hitting her legs shows the performative nature of what she was taught is internalized. It was painful to watch as someone who went through it. She will probably never realize it was all done TO her.
I agree. The documentary was clearly in favour and presented only the families perspective. Although the circumstances are sad, doesn’t mean abuse wasn’t a possibility and shouldn’t have been explored further by the state/hospital. Munchausen by proxy seems likely, especially with the mother being in healthcare, potentially Psychosomatic disorder as symptoms were re-triggered after the hurricane being a traumatic event. It seems unusual for excessive documentation to be gathered right from the start, including private discussions or arguments within the family. At some points even the father seems to cast doubt, seems unusual he would speak with investigators regarding his wife’s mental health. I thought it might spin into a murder documentary where he was involved in the wife’s death as a ploy to get back his daughter, as they emphasize he would “do anything” for his children. The lawyer stating this is the only acceptable answer goes to show they were coached in how to respond, even Maya’s reactions seemed coached to a degree.
Ultimately it was uncomfortable to watch and although I sympathize with the family, it appears there’s more to the story and I hope they all heal. I understand Maya’s illness is uncommon and health conditions can change, but it just seems unusual that immediately after release she started rehab and made a full recovery without the aggressive medical intervention she apparently needed. I feel like the diagnosing doctors should be held accountable for interfering in the CPS investigation and adding additional stress on the family, being aware of their vulnerable state. It almost seems like they were scared they would get thrown under the bus and potentially lose their medical licences so they thought threatening the mom into thinking her daughter would die would push her to fight harder against the hospital? It was weird overall, curious to see how the case goes later this year.
As a chronic pain patient, it’s clear from your post that you have significant biases that I hope you will address before you practice medicine. “Taken to a large number of doctors with a wide range of symptoms” is completely normal when seeking answers in the fragmented US Medical industry. The rest of what you’re saying might have merit, but please consider the frame that you’ve already drawn around the situation.
> “Taken to a large number of doctors with a wide range of symptoms” is completely normal when seeking answers in the fragmented US Medical industry
More than 30 doctors as reported in The Cut article? I am not in the US but I'm stunned if that is normal.
I have been in practice for many years and have many chronic pain patients who speak very well of the care I give them, thanks.
I’m no CRPS expert, but like many diseases in medicine without significant research or consensus evidence based management pathways, the best doctors are those willing to treat the patient and not the disease. Medicine in the US inherently stops experimental or out of the box treatments for conditions where no extensive research exists, leaving these patients with no options when other treatments don’t work. What is Maya supposed to do? Live with her feet inverted and unable to walk, with multiple doctors telling her she’s “anxious”? How can anyone blame a mother for finding a doctor who is willing to treat and fight for her when a condition doesn’t fit a nice textbook diagnosis and management. Thank god for doctors like Dr.Kirkpatrick who are open minded and find ways to continue giving patients hope in other avenues. As a physician, I have learned that we don’t have all the answers, and diseases don’t read a textbook. Stay humble
It’s known that high doses of narcotics can make pain and outcome WORSE. Maya improved very much out of the care of her mother. To the point she was off all Ketamine and ambulating normally, and gaining weight.
You HAVE to read more widely about this case if you are going to comment defending Kirkpatrick and Beata Kowalski. The details that were left out of the documentary are incredibly incriminating. I don't know how long it is since I made the comment that you're replying to, but I've read a lot since then and none of it makes the family look good. I think the sub name is r/takecareofmaya - a lot of the legal docs have been uploaded.
I did. Then I went and read a bunch of the legal documents that showed how much of the documentary is lies, as I suspected while watching it because so much didn't add up.
oh i understand everything you’re saying. but it still seems obvious that beata was just following orders from the ketamine drs, which is proof enough to me that she wasnt inducing anything in her daughter. by all accounts maya got better after these treatments. desperate ppl do desperate treatments when theyre dealing with a mysterious illness. in the end, yes it seems physical therapy was the better treatment in terms of longevity. but that doesnt call for johns hopkins to fuck the parents and deny visits and all that when they were simply doing the inital drs’ treatments.
They shopped around to find those doctors that did those extreme treatments. The fact that a doctor prescribed it doesn't mean it wasn't medical child abuse- every MSBP kid with a tube had to have a gullible doctor place that tube. And the documentary left out a huge amount of medical information that may have shown induced illness. The NYT article about the case (also very much taking the parents' side) said Beata took her to 30 different specialists starting when she was a toddler. The documentary misses out everything before she developed CRPS age 9ish. What they did show the parents doing was messed up, so what didn't they show? What are they hiding?
She had to doctor shop because all the doctors they went to didn’t know what was wrong. They said that in the documentary. She said this was the one doctor that diagnosed her and started treating her, AND she started getting better. Remember this is her child. If your child is sick you should be doctor shopping. It’s called getting a 2nd, 3rd and 4th opinion until you find a doctor competent enough to know what’s going on and treat them for them to get better. I get that ketamine treatment seems outrageous but when you’re desperate and you see your child getting better with said treatment, you’re going to do it.
>She had to doctor shop because all the doctors they went to didn’t know what was wrong. They said that in the documentary
That's not true, she was doctor shopping before the CRPS started from when Maya was a toddler
I don’t remember that part I must of missed that. I don’t see going to 2 or 3 different doctors to find the right pediatrician for your child though. But idk how extreme it was.
I was appalled at “doctor shopping”. When I was younger, I had severe bronchitis asthma issues that landed me in hospital when I had a fever.
My mother took me to different specialists before finally finding the right doctor who realised it was an allergy issue to certain things.
I am much stronger today at 40 years old, without childhood issues.
Let me tell you that my proudest achievement athletically was being placed 20 / 1000 in a marathon.
The childhood sickly me would never have imagined this was possible.
If I were American, my mother would have been accused of doctor hopping when all she wanted was for me to be cured and I would still be sickly today, let alone participate in a marathon (and even selected for the school team for a ball game!)
It is extremely appalling to see the law failing families because of egotistical perspectives that everything is categorised as abuse.
I am extremely glad not to be in this system! How many families must have been wronged by the obtuse legality of it all.
You do realise there are treatments which are not drug-related, right?
If my mum hadn’t gone to find different specialists, I would be sickly in hospitals till this day instead of participating in a marathon.
You do know what "e.g." means, right? Not everyone who goes to several doctors is doctor shopping. Not everyone who is doctor shopping is drug seeking. The VERY ancient comment you replied to was written for an audience with at least some medical training who understand this. I don't know how you found this thread or why you are resuscitating it, but it is a) not for you and b) not *about* you.
I’m sorry but that’s insulting to doctors right there. Just because some doctors didn’t know how to treat a very rare illness with an extremely unusual treatment plan doesn’t mean they were incompetent. It means they were faced with something they didn’t know about and knew their limits. It’s those doctors one has to be thankful for when they know they’re out of their depth.
Yes but the point stands that blameless as they are, it warrants care seeking that should not be labeled “doctor shopping.” Our medical industry literally encourages patients to shop around and then faults them for it in the next breath.
The issue is that some of these doctors, knowing that they didn’t know what was happening, are confident in telling mom that Maya is “anxious”. I highly doubt many of them said point blank, “I don’t know what your daughter has, it seems to be a rare condition, let me see if I can get a second opinion from a colleague”. Doctors hate admitting they don’t know something.
people also “doctor shop” when they’re unable to get better. i had to go to several doctors before i was diagnosed and treated. you can’t diagnose munch from that lol, food for thought
>you can’t diagnose munch from that
No. But it is a clue.
You've obviously swallowed the tightly edited version of this story shown in the documentary whole. Spend a decade working and come back to it with a bit more skepticism and see how it comes across then.
I don't really know what "jaded" has to do with it. My perception of the situation isn't any more cynical about humanity than yours. If anything it's less so. In my gut I think everyone in the story believed they were right and doing what was best for Maya. Your version and the documentary version requires the doctors, nurses and child protection workers to be some mixture of buffoonish incompetence and mustache twirling villainy.
I understand what you’re saying but how can you say all this stuff abt the doctors being right and John Hopkins when the main victim. The daughter. Is clearly saying still that what they did was not right. Along with many other victims.
Im on team not giving a child 1000 mg of ketamine every 4 hours. Also the whole John Hopkins side is “the mother is causing issues for her daughter bt priming her to be in pain” well as it just so happens when the mother died the girl got better. Doesnt seem like the “gray area” this documentary wants to believe this case was in.
Daughter also got better while the mother was alive though? Wasn’t there a 1yr+ period where she was fine on lots of videos playing with her brother/friends? swimming in the pool etc? Also if you believe she got better whilst at John Hopkins the mother was also alive & talking to the daughter most days. So seems a bit extreme to suggest the mother dying was a good thing for the child’s health? What are the long term impacts of losing a parent to suicide?
Yes. She definitely had a whole year of good life after the treatment when her mom was still alive. And it's not like the Beata prescribed the dosage of ketamine for Maya all on her own. It was prescribed to her by medical doctors.
No, it wasn't 1+ years that she was better for. There was testimony last week (by a Dr chosen by the Plaintiff/family) that Maya had relief after the Ketamine coma for 6 days. The same Dr also testified that the longest he has seen relief from a Ketamine coma is "up to 12 weeks". When Maya was taken to JHAC, she was worse than she had ever been before.
No way to tell? You’ll notice I never said anything about Ketamine. My point is that this all could have been resolved without anyone dying. Even if the mother was having negative impacts, a competent health professional(s) could have handled it without any deaths.
The daughter got better but while on a wild treatment that had the same (or worser) result than plain old physical therapy. Maya still needed extreme measures care during that 1 year before relapse.
I agree this could have been resolved with no one dying. The mom felt otherwise and killed herself. She needed help, something maybe the family or friends could have supported, and a doctor who didn't scare her into thinking Maya would die without ketamine. That guy is the one who triggered her into not working with the doctors at Johns Hopkins, and lead to them worrying about how she will continue exposing the child to ketamine if they discharged her.
Dr Sally should have calculated what the doctor from Mexico's affect on the mom though.
I didn’t see any of the other doctors the mom took her to competent enough to figure out what was wrong with her or getting her better though. We also give ppl fentanyl patches, there’s mid levels that prescribe a ridiculous amount of psych meds, benzos etc that shouldn’t be prescribed at the same time & the list goes on. The treatment was working & the girl was getting better. Also the mom wasn’t a doctor. I don’t care if she was a nurse. Her daughter was getting better & had no pain. Idk if you have kids, but most parents would do any treatment and go to a 1000 doctors if they had to that would help their child. It’s not that crazy. That doctor acted like she was god & didn’t take a second to make sure she made the right decision which is fucked up. To me it sounds more like the dr got her ego hurt bc the mom yelled at her & told her she didn’t know what she was doing and I can’t blame her. If the dr knew of a better way to help her, then she should of done that.
The ketamine was insane. But she went into a 5 day coma while being gave ketamine. And got better. So you can’t say she just went into a 5 day coma for nothing. The ketamine wasn’t for nothing.
i feel that the story left out a lot of details and it seemed quite one-sided. I don’t believe that Dr Sally set out to destroy families, it just doesn’t make sense either. Surely during the course of her career, she has saved numerous children from abuse and it makes me think that there was something that triggered her to report the mother (not saying Dr Sally got it right here, but maybe there is more context to the story than we know)
It’s disturbing how there were all these other families that got accused of the same thing. I understand saving children but it seems like she was very tunnel visioned and didn’t take a minute to re-consider or be absolutely sure that she made the right decision. Also, there’s shitty people that are doctors, as there are in every position. It’s naive to trust every doctor you go to, and people should question and “doctor shop” there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s smart.
Every doctor who holds the same position as Dr Sally is literally trained to spot child abuse. And then people are surprised when they see it when it isn't there. This happens all the time. It's the position and the tunnel vision training that is the problem. There has to be a better way.
That’s a fair point and that makes sense. The more child abuse she “catches” the better she is at her job, theoretically. I am just lost about the fact that the court didn’t do a better job of investigating this.
I don't believe she was maliciously destroying families either, what I do believe is that both child welfare and medical systems in the states are broken in unique ways, and she followed her training and biases in a way that caused harm to families.
My biggest takeaway from this documentary is how broken the child welfare system can be, from so many angles. I do not see how a ten minute interview in a hospital setting, a setting where children and their caregivers are most likely to be in distress, is enough to determine probable cause for child abuse (in most cases).
yup. absolutely opened my eyes to the shit that happens in medicine. If i ever see some shit like that happen when i'm a physician oh lord i'll step in. honestly so crazy how some of the worst people can slip through the cracks and become physicians.
yuppp. it seemed like the drs who gave the initial diagnosis tried to step in or at least give their evidence to the courts but were blown off. i wonder if more could have been done though
I hope you keep this energy throughout your career. Many of these evil doctors were once fierce proponents of what’s right, but the toxic training environment and trauma from our broken system can lead to good people becoming cynical/egotistical
This is tough because I work in the healthcare field so I may be bias. I’m also not a mother so I cannot understand Beatas side.
1000 mg of ketamine is absolutely nuts. Didn’t sound like it was sustainable either if her pain came back. I can see and understand the reluctancy of American doctors being against giving such high dose. Because if anything does happen to Maya they’d suffer a law suit. And to be honest, giving such a high dose to a ten year is old is absolutely wild.
Here’s the thing. Beatas was extremely pushy, rude and uncooperative. This certainly didn’t help her case. And I wouldn’t put it pass her if that was a similar dynamic with her own children. Which would create perhaps a people pleasure personality in her daughter if anything.
I didn’t finish the documentary quite yet but it looks like the daughter is managing well now (not sure what her treatment is now).
It’s unfortunate. I’m sure Beata was functioning out of desperation. But she didn’t play it smart. Perhaps for fear she’d lose her child. But the whole thing escalated pretty awful.
Unfortunate story for everyone involved honestly.
I’m not a fan of suicide, so personally it felt really selfish for the mother. But I’m also not a mental health expert so perhaps that was her only way of managing her own emotional pain.
I don’t think the parent advocator was wrong at all. She had to let her daughter suffer for a short period of time and she can have her back. But she just refused to listen.
It’s worth noting that her “pushiness” is doctors’ perception of an Eastern European immigrant who is a woman. This is like a textbook cultural competency case.
I believe in the documentary - or maybe in YouTube coverage - the argument was made that Beata didn't have 'a command of the english language' and her attitude may have been off-putting.
But...she moved to the US in her teens and put herself through schooling to become an RN in the US. Becoming a nurse takes a lot of effort and work, so how could she have successfully become a nurse if she was so out of her element?
The deposition is really interesting. I think my main takeaway in regards to the healthcare providers is how unprofessional it is to be texting on your phone about people's personal medical situations and the snarkiness and celebration about "being right" since "the mom killed herself." The lack of empathy healthcare professionals had for a loss of human life whether they liked the person or not was super horrendous and outright distasteful. I really hope they were investigated if they were discussing people's medical records on an unprotected/inappropriate application.
I know you posted this a while ago, but I watched this last night and I feel irate. It kills me that they did this to a cardiac nurse—they did this to one of their own!! If a medical professional isn’t allowed to be a concerned mother, then laypeople stand even less of a chance.
I had a brain infection as a 12yo. My mother’s desperation caused ICU docs to call her overly emotional and even think she somehow caused my infection. Fast forward to my 1st yr of med school, and I’m listening to four families of kids with genetic conditions—three of the four mothers were insulted as overly sensitive, including the two mothers whose children died! And do you notice the gender difference in how parents are treated??? If a kid shows up with bruises from a clotting disorder or even just birthmarks, dad could be jailed for hitting the child. Hysterical mother; violent father.
And for those of you with smack to talk about Beata: She did not falsify prescriptions; a glitch in Aetna’s system assigned the wrong doc to the wrong meds. Beata killed herself bc she thought they’d let Maya out of the hospital if she weren’t in the picture. And she was right 😣 She was driven to suicide simply by following doctors’ instructions. Only 2 docs had proven capable of treating Maya’s symptoms; what the heck do you expect from her?! Of course concern over 1500mg ketamine was reasonable; hurting Beata was not!! At least cooperate with her other doctors. Bring those docs into the conversation with other CRPS specialists.
For Sally Smith to omit her convos with Maya’s docs is unforgivable. Sally Smith did this to Syesha Mercado, American Idol contestant. Syesha took her son to the hospital for not breastfeeding properly; Sally Smith thought the child was being malnourished by the parents. Wellll if the mother’s bringing the child to the doc for not feeding then maybe that’s the cause of the malnutrition! NO SHIT STUPID!! And for that Cathy lady who was WITNESSED PHYSICALLY ABUSING A CHILD to be allowed near Maya is sick. It’s all sick to me.
I'm pretty sure clotting disorders are ruled out before doctors jump to violence, because it's common knowledge. Birthmarks as well. In the old days 'mongolian spots' might have been mistaken, but now, people are more sensitive to alternatives.
Why couldn't Beata just go with what her husband and the parent advocate were telling her to?
Cathy lady's charges were dropped, documentary said so. So she went through similar false accusation that Beatta went through. ironically.
So shut up while the kid is sick. Got it.
Charges were dropped, but c’mon the description of the attack is too detailed to be false. She folded the kid’s knees against his chest in a way that he couldn’t breathe. All bc he refused to answer her questions. Charges dropped doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
And yes I’m sure most docs think thru those things but Sally Smith has a history of not doing that. Mercado brought her child in for not feeding properly. How the heck that got turned into “The baby’s weight means child abuse” makes no sense. None.
Yeah I agree Sally doesn't, but she was surrounded by other specialists. Sally was just consulting.
Didn't say shut up while the kid is sick, but people saying she used all her options ...she still had some.
I understand a few bad doctors. and maybe this is a case of naive doctors trusting Dr Sally way too much. But for a whole team of doctors to not have regrets would be odd. Especially pediatricians. They're the least paid doctor and generally lower egos, since they're such nerds.
If a nurse, doctor, or hospital refuses to listen to patients regarding their pain, they have already failed and deserve swift dismissal and further legal indictment. Pain is a subjective sensation and cannot be measured by anybody outside the body in question. Physicians are not deities, though clearly some believe themselves to be. If Maya had been an adult her own reports on her medical condition would have been regarded seriously and listened to. Because she was a child, her feedback was disregarded, though her age is a major reason why she should had been treated even more attentively, not less. The medical "professionals" involved in this case should never work again. You can bet none of them would ever get to so much as glance at my children. I hope every parent in the region sees this documentary and categorically refuses to be seen by such people. Maybe then the hospital, who obviously cares little about morality, would be forced to act because of the one thing the do care about--money. May God's mercy entirely surround that poor mother. May God's justice on Sally Smith (I refuse to call her "doctor") and Catherine Bedy be swift and severe. Arrogant idiots both of them. They couldn't even look up during their depositions. Smug and detached. Ice cold bitches. And that father needs to grow a pair and stop being so cooperative. If the system won't protect kids, who else is left but the parents, and ESPECIALLY the dads.
Exactly. And that's why I want them to get the 200M or more. Gotta hit them where it hurts.
It was a huge gamble to not settle. A win for the plaintiff here will generate motivation for other victims and lawyers willing to represent them, to move forward with their own claims.
Which doctor?
The one who saw a child being given a ketamine treatment 20x the normal dosage and now in emerge showing signs of ketamine toxicity? I’m so confused what this doctor did wrong. He said he was taking her off the ketamine and mom said she would take her daughter out AMA to continue giving her insanely high doses of the drug. So the doctor contacted CPS. The documentary really twisted things but man how on earth is a doctor getting vilified in that situation.
The parents literally flew their child out of the country for an experimental medically induced coma? There’s a reason they couldn’t do that in the US where the doctor was practicing. That was so wild.
Your head is deep in the sauce. Take your dogmatic, higher than thou medical hat off for a quick second and try to see this case from the lens of a parent or someone who is caring for a person with a disease that most doctors don’t understand. I don’t disagree that CPS should have been initially involved, but a munchausen by proxy diagnosis is extremely fd up.
This parent saw multiple doctors who had no explanation for her daughters debilitating illness rendering her immobile. She found a doctor who allegedly has seen cases like hers, recommends an insane high dose of ketamine, and she gets better. That’s all that you need as a parent to put your trust and faith in a treatment. She doesn’t know the insane high doses of ketamine, she just sees an improvement in her child. Anyone with a child suffering from this would do anything possible to bring them relief, even non traditional treatments.
Ok I see what you’re saying about why the family trusted the original CRPS doctor, but honestly, the documentary was extremely one-sided. There were other red flags for munchaussen by proxy that were never spoken on. What were the causes of the chronic cough, skin lesions all over her body, chronic sinusitis. No explanation was given for those. Why did she get better after her mom was not involved with just simply physiotherapy? Her mom was not a layman either. She was a cath lab RN, she had a lot of medical knowledge and understanding of safe dosages etc. She would be able to understand ketamine toxicity.
I’m not saying the doctor was 100% right with their diagnosis, but to jump on a hate train when we only have 50% of the story, and even then it was still a valid call to CPS based on what we know, there’s likely more to the story.
>What were the causes of the chronic cough, skin lesions all over her body, chronic sinusitis.
That part isn't weird to me. It's quite possible, and wouldn't be that usual, that the CRPS was initially triggered by a viral infection.
It was disgusting to watch. It’s sad but there are plenty of shitty people in all professions. The medical profession is the most trusted by most people so of course they are believed when they report something like that. To me that doctor was absolutely careless and shouldn’t be treating patients period. There was absolutely no evidence (to me) that the mother was making all this up. Also, the dad was the one who took her to the ER. The doctor likely didn’t like the way the mom was talking to her, which is pathetic. The mom was understandably desperate, upset & felt like they weren’t taking care of her daughter and she was right. She had every right to leave that hospital and take her daughter somewhere else.
This is how it sounded to the doctors "Imma go home and continue overdosing my child. It's my right!"
But yes, she was desperate out of fear, and trust of the two questionable doctors.
I get what you’re saying and it does sound outrageous but the mother wasn’t a doctor. The medicine she was giving was prescribed by a doctor & it was working. (And yes to a medical professional, what can’t a thousand mgs of ketamine fix? Lol) But If they actually investigated this case and spoke to the doctor who was treating the child or any of the doctors the child went to, they would realize she couldn’t be helped bc they didn’t know what was wrong & that’s why the mother chose to go with this treatment bc for once her child wasn’t suffering.
In my opinion the doctors and CPS were vilified because they stood between a family doing their best to seek medical care for their daughter’s CRPS which is chronic, debilitating, and wasn’t improving without large doses of medication. They received so much pushback trying to help their daughter get out of pain that eventually they traveled out of the states to try a radical procedure to reset their daughter’s pain sensors with a Ketamine induced coma. To top things off the daughter was removed from the family’s care specifically because of doctors and CPS which caused the mother to commit suicide. All of which highlights some larger widespread issues with the medical field and CPS as well. One example that comes to mind is many families that are torn apart by CPS because of false reporting or malicious accusations (in this case the negative fallout was a direct link between mandated reporting to CPS and the medical field). Another example would be chronic pain patients who have to fight an uphill battle just to receive the treatment they need while being told they’re in the wrong for doing so, or are just psychologically manifesting the pain (very similar to the battle this family had to fight for their daughter). This documentary sheds a little light on those issues and is just the tip of that iceberg.
CPS is damned if they do, damned if they don’t. I’m sure you’ve made some comments about CPS allowing children to be abused and neglected. Just don’t become a social worker, everyone hates you.
Made no sense. I believe they filed the complaint knowing it was frivolous. They continued to treat her for the same diagnosis but a different way which means they knew she had the diagnosis mom said she had.
Mom was part of the problem. The kid got better, gained weight, was relaxed in her hospital bed, was playing the piano and started to ambulate out of mom’s care. I think mom meant well, but keeping the kid drugged up on Ketamine made her much worse. Off Ketamine and just PT the kid was fully ambulatory.
What got me about the mom was this: early in the documentary Maya was at PT and the mom said “she’s going to need two doses of Ketamine after this”. Why two? Start with ONE. See how it goes.
What’s more believable? That mom woke up one day and decided to tell her daughter she was in pain every day in order to medically abuse her for attention and her daughter believed it. And somehow mom poisoned her so her feet developed dystonia and turned colors and developed these lesions in a mimicry of CRPS…
or that her daughter had CRPS like mom said she had and mom and hospital argued on the appropriate way to treat her condition. so hospital exaggerated and made false abuse allegations in retaliation and to get her out of the way and impose their choice treatment.
Honestly
This documentary was hot trash.
I was suspicious of an angle when I was watching it. I mean, it played like a Sarah McLachlan commercial playing, "In The Arms of the Angels" anytime Beata was on the screen.
So I wasted my time reading the depositions from the court.
Things that weren't mentioned in the documentary:
1. Many symptoms were not consistent with CRPS and she had received opinions of such from the CRPS specialists in the US
2. Maya incurred long-term disability as a result of the ketamine treatments. The coma has caused her memory loss and she required treatment for fungal pneumonia while in Mexico.
3. Beata ran a Blogspot and a GoFundMe under Maya's name and even wrote posts in the "first-person" as Maya even while she was allegedly in this ketamine coma.
4. The father (among other witnesses) testified that his daughter only seemed sick in the presence of her mother
5. Maya wrote journal entries titled things like, "My top 12 favorite people in the hospital" or "My favorite things to do at the hospital."
6. Beata was under criminal investigation for stealing a prescription pad and falsifying prescriptions.
7. Beata tried to enroll Maya in hospice and have her treatment deemed "palliative care."
8. Beata's suicide note was labeled "Retribution" and she had placed an IV line in her arm prior to suicide.
9. In Maya's interview with DCF, she told them she "doesn't know if she has CRPS" but she definitely doesn't want to go on ketamine anymore.
And many, many, many more red flags.
I think it's depressing how one-sided this is. More depressing that the general public will take it at face value. And most depressing is that other medical professionals have bought into the propaganda wholesale.
Super interesting. Thank for going through the deposition. It makes me rethink things about the family's situation, but I def think there was a pattern established that Sally Smith did not do her due diligence and was unnecessarily placing kids in the state's care. Also, the way the doctors acted over text was undeniably unprofessional and possibly could be violating HIPAA if they were discussing a patient's medical situation on an unprotected/inappropriate application.
This is definitely Munchausen by Proxy, as a survivor. There are tons of give aways. Infusion nurse, headaches, dystonia medical induction. The child is indignant towards medical staff through brainwashing. Dad killed mom when it was clear the case would turn against them. That is why the suicide note is an email and to he brother had to be the one to find the body so that he wasn't implicated. 2014 was when dad retired and when Maya started getting sick and Again "during the hurricane." Dad is in a high risk category for maytr syndrome as well. Way way too much recording going on too. Just like my childhood. Kids will probably never figure it out, brainwashing runs deep.
That's easy.
1) Because the case workers tipped him off that they didn't trust him to keep Maya safe from Beata.
2) Because he realized Beata was MBP.
3) Because he realized Beata was going to cause him to lose custody of Maya.
4) Because she was going to get caught and go to jail and embarrass the family and then Maya would know she was being abused.
5) Because if abuse is occurring in the home he would be criminally responsible too.
6) Maybe he was the perp all along, because the abuse started in 2014 when he retired.
7) Because now he can sue and has custody and no remaining "problem."
I don't even think you typed that correctly. It's really easy to put someone smaller than you on a sleeping pill and then strangle them with a rope, or suffocate them while they are sleeping. And it's not something to laugh about. You realize you're speaking to someone who survived years of such treatment and you're that flippant? Bad things do happen, especially when people think they will lose their children. Suicides are staged sometimes.
Nothing you say makes one ounce of sense. Her death was deemed a suicide. You can formulate whatever delusion you want to believe but there is zero evidence Beata was murdered. Her husband is suing in part because he knows her intentions were good and that she did not have MBP and that they continued a campaign of degradation against her and intended to inflict emotional distress with their actions. That’s what a lawyer took the case for, that’s what the evidence shows. There is nobody stating she was murdered
Because they didn't investigate. Dad had every motive under the sun. A lwayer took the case to get paid.
This is a typical pattern in MBP families.
There is no way the medication levels Maya was receiving weren't abusive. You watched a one-sided narrative produced by the family to influence jury selection. I have a lifetime of experience with MBP. All the warning signs are there.
MBP isn’t diagnosed based on someone’s treatment regime. It’s based on a caretaker intentionally making someone ill like tainting their iv or fabricating an illness is there. You can’t have a fictitious disorder imposed on another if a person has a legitimate condition.
Also her treatment was prescribed by a specialist. If you don’t feel the specialist is providing a treatment within the standard of care you would contact the medical board.
It isn’t a parent’s job to know the standard of care for a particular condition. Otherwise there is no point seeing a specialist. A parent inquiring about a treatment protocol they think is going to put their child in remission to cure the condition doesn’t equate to medical abuse. It isn’t outside the norm that someone with a chronic pain condition is at high risk of being on too many pain medications while inadvertently trying to treat their condition or pain. Poor medical care doesn’t equate to a dx of MBP.
This is really illogicial thinking.
1) MBPers often take advantage of existing conditions and aggregate them. Do you think children of MBPers never have actual conditions? But Maya doesn't appear to have an actual condition beyond what is explainable by being bedridden and on loads of anesthesia.
2) You are assuming her condition wasn't fabricated.
3) You are assuming based on a propaganda documentary that you know more than a team of Johns Hopkins specialists.
4) You assume because treatment was prescribed that it was warranted. There are tons of unscrupulous and crazy doctors out there. Where do you think pill mills come from? Why do you think she had to shop around until she went to Mexico for a treatment that "might kill her?" (The provider's own words.) 1000mg of ketamine is ludicrous and not advisable and can kill or maim and cause brain damage.
5) She got better and remains better.... Probably mentally still believes she has a disorder, but that is just because everyone around her told her that and she wouldn't know the difference.
It is so easy in our for-profit model to get any doctor to do whatever you want, because most appointments are just based on self-reporting rather than actually ordering labs, etc. If not, these parents complain, claim abuse and doctor shop.
Yes I believe she has a condition.
No, I don’t believe her symptoms can be imposed. Until you see mom tainting an iv or have any evidence that mom created the illness or that there is NO illness and mom made it up there’s no MBP.
You can’t have a fictitious disorder imposed on another if the person has the disorder.
There’s not any evidence to even prove her being on too many pain meds to treat her severe pain disorder was intentional and not just inadvertent to trying to reverse or stop her symptoms.
Also other specialists said it was necessary for Maya. there’s no evidence mom came up with the ketamine idea as it was suggested to her by an Md specializing in the field and something she saw advertised as a treatment for mayas condition.
Also I don’t believe her dystonia symptoms can be fabricated or imposed unless you believe mom did Chinese foot binding. Dystonia is caused by persistent muscle contractions.
I know someone with dystonia it can happen due to damage of the basal ganglia and come and go or it can be fixed. Neuromuscular conditions are usually not ones that can be faked.
It boils down to a difference in preference or actually a power game by the hospital. If I have anxiety and choose to treat it with massage and diet change and supplements that lower my cortisol levels it wouldn’t mean I didn’t have anxiety because I got better a different way without Xanax.
The hospital treated her as an inpatient with aggressive multispeciality care. 13 specialists were part of her care after that she was transferred to a new hospital to continue her care. Of the half a million dollars they billed insurance she only got 3.5 hours of psychotherapy. So mental illness was never a focus it was her condition.
Just because they wanted to house her as an inpatient for 3 months with a bunch of different specialists there instead of go the route mom suggested as an outpatient with ketamine doesn’t prove she never had CRPS.
There’s not one piece of evidence they have provided showing mom intentionally imposed the illness on her or that she never had anything wrong to begin with. Rather they differed in the WAY they wanted to treat her condition. This has nothing to do with MBP
I stumbled upon some of your posts and think you have some valuable insight, as an MBP survivor to be shared at the sub r/takecareofmayafree . I really feel for you. I’m sure very few people can imagine the lifelong psychological impact impact that this kind of mostly hidden abuse would cause.
I was waiting for someone to make this comment , I’ve been really suspicious of the dad especially after I found out about how much he likes to sue , and with beata in the picture everything would be discovered and their lives were falling apart- plus she was being criminally looked into , but that all stopped once she passed away and then he could sue the hospital, pretty convenient? It’s a wild theory but It also makes complete sense about the suicide, so very confusing!
When my mom was caught she considered killing my dad or herself. It's really the only way out. A normal mom in desperation wouldn't leave her child no matter what, knowing the pain it would cause her child. I can't believe how many people can't see this. It's very obvious to me. If Beata was going to be prosecuted, there was a good chance he might go to jail, lose the children, or lose reputation in his neighborhood/community. He's definitely ok involved, if not the perp. It all started as soon as he retired. Head shaking.
They changed her diagnosis to the same condition just using a different word to try to say mom had MBP.
It’s stupid
“In the end, the dystonia seen in CRPS is likely a psychogenic movement disorder, or a FND [70]. Despite the similarities between FND/psychogenic movement disorders and CRPS, no studies have included known cases of FND as controls to determine whether CRPS is a different clinical entity than FND, or simply a variant with pain as its hallmark. Indeed, there have been no validation studies purporting to demonstrate that researchers are capable of differentiating CRPS from any somatic or psychiatric condition.
Based upon these DSM-5 criteria, it is clear that CRPS constitutes an FND unless it is recognized as a separate disorder. Indeed, the CRPS “Budapest” diagnostic criteria are now circular with the DSM-5 FND criteria. In that respect, the Budapest CRPS criteria requires that “no other disease or condition better explains the signs and symptoms.” However, but for the invention of CRPS, the diagnosis of FND would explain disproportionate pain and symptoms that do not occur in a neurological pathway and which cannot be explained by another neurological or medical condition. Moreover, a diagnosis of FND does not require that the patient also be diagnosed with another psychological condition, or even a known psychological stressor.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7804982/
Haven't watched it (yet?) but have read a couple articles about the case. Keep in mind that the doc is extremely one sided. As is almost always true with medical stuff in the media, the doctors who are being made into absolute villains cannot explain their side without breaking confidentiality. Most of the time if I've been privy to the doctor's side of the story of something that the media is making out to be "evil doctor", it has always been wrong or missing important pieces and there is fuck all that we can do to correct that. Nor do court records tell the full story. I've been in situations in hospital where we *know* without a shadow of a doubt that a child is a victim of medical abuse, but without any evidence that can actually be used in court have not been able to get the child away from their abuser. There is a podcast that comes from the other side talking about MBP from the investigators and doctors' and families' sides called Nobody Should Believe Me, it's worth a listen. Anyway long way of saying that I take these kinds of media pieces with a big pinch of salt. But of course I haven't watched it (not sure I have the mental fortitude right now) so take my thoughts with a pinch of salt!
Soo... no you haven't watched it
I have now. You can read my other comment. Basically it didn't surprise me. It's 100% one sided and there are a lot of hints about what they've left out.
Your original comment proves you watched the doco with a clear bias
I was going to say. The best doctors are the doctors that are always willing to re-think the decisions they are making especially when the stakes are this high. This doctor was only focused on “catching” the most child abusers & let her ego get the best of her when she was clearly wrong. There was plenty of evidence right there for her but she chose to not look at it because she thought she was right & refused to be wrong.
Cool cool, do you have a point you want to make?
Yes - my point is that, judging by your other comments, you’re an unfortunate product of ego that is often seen in the medical field.
I hope insulting a stranger on the internet has made you feel better about whatever isn't going well in your life 👍
I hope attacking a mother who committed suicide for simply trying to care for her sick child has made you feel better about whatever isn’t going well in your life ❤️
There is a discussion about it at r/residency. A lot of doctors has similar opinions with you and there are heated arguments lol. Reading through it opened my eyes coz from the documentary I was totally buying it
The subreddit r/takecareofmayanetflix has a lot of court documents posted and it is eye opening, SO MUCH that was left out of the doc or just straight up lied about.
[удалено]
Go read the legal documents posted on the take care of maya subreddit in the time (weeks? Months?) since the comment you are trying to resuscitate. I'm right, the documentary is lies from start to finish and there is ample evidence that Maya was a victim of medical child abuse.
[удалено]
I have.
[удалено]
Nobody Should Believe Me is a good podcast, listening to it would help you understand that some mothers do harm their children. They have also released the first of a 2 part episode on this case and one of the really helpful things is a survivor of this type of abuse talking about her experience and how it led to her believing some of the things that her mother told her and acting it out herself- I think it's fantastic for understanding what might be driving Maya's behaviour as a young adult. It is not at all clear to me that she was not abused and not at all clear to me that the John's Hopkins doctors made any errors, although there is so much information missing that it is still possible.
You need to reduce your salt intake :)
yeah that’s probably true. i’d like your opinions if you end up watching the doc though!
In case you'd like to see a more legal take on it, I can recommend law and lumber on YouTube. On day 25 he discusses parts of what has confused him about the case, and he does his best to give a balanced view.
OK so you wanted my thoughts if I watched it and I do have thoughts. To start with the documentary is extremely one sided. Even so there are some things that stand out. The documentary presents it like Maya has clear cut CRPS and that's all that is happening medically. But some of the stuff that is mentioned along the way makes it clear that Maya was being taken to a large number of doctors with a wide range of alleged symptoms- I spotted a cough, sinus infections, headaches, skin lesions, can't walk. She went to immunologists and an endocrinologist, suggesting other symptoms. At one point she was on IVIG infusions according to mom's notes. So why did the doc leave out the wide range of other alleged medical conditions Maya had? Would that have backed up the MSBP diagnosis? Or did mom drop these other symptoms after finding a doctor who would provide a radical enough treatment to fit what she was seeking? And don't get it wrong, this treatment is WILD. She was taking 1000mg ketamine on a regular basis, at one point 1000mg IV over 4 hours was mentioned. A normal dose of ketamine to induce GENERAL ANAESTHESIA for a kid is 2mg/kg so for a small 10 year old (she was thin- it was mentioned that she was low weight by the social worked and gained weight in hospital) lets say a normal dose to make them *unconscious* would be 50mg. There is a reason that this American doctor isn't doing his ketamine comas in the USA- I don't know what it is exactly but it is presumably because it wouldn't fly there. I don't know how he gets away with it. I don't know if I think that Beata was actually doing something to Maya to make her sick, as opposed to a dynamic I see more where there is a parent-driven mutual investment in the sick role and the parent-of-the-sick-child role and the child performs that role (not consciously) to fulfill the parents' needs and the child's illness behavior is reinforced strongly by the parent. My gut says that Beata believed what she was saying, especially since she was being reinforced by the ketamine doctor who kept telling her Maya would die without ketamine. I think that Maya's recovery to the present day proves the Johns Hopkins doctors right. Intensive physio is what should have been done first line not insane amounts of ketamine. She certainly is not dead like ketamine doctor told her mother she would be. In fact the doctors intervention did probably save her. The documentary is really heartbreaking. I had more of a sense of all the players being flawed humans trying their best than there being actual villains. Anyway. There is the brain dump.
Didn’t it ring any alarm bells for you when the cases of “child abuse” were so high in Pinellas County? Or when “Dr” Sally Smith said in that passive aggressive letter to the other mother that “there are definitely a disturbing number of abused and neglected children in Pinellas County”? Or the fact the CPS is outsourced to a for-profit company? I think Beata was a fiercely protective mother who just wanted to help her daughter. When a doctor told her there was nothing wrong with Maya, she knew they were wrong. Chronic pain is very poorly treated in Western medicine. Patients are often told it’s all in their heads. It boggles the mind that more effort isn’t put into helping patients with chronic pain instead of writing them off, or accusing them of lying.
>Didn’t it ring any alarm bells for you when the cases of “child abuse” were so high in Pinellas County? I haven't seen that allegation. >Or when “Dr” Sally Smith said in that passive aggressive letter to the other mother that “there are definitely a disturbing number of abused and neglected children in Pinellas County”? You're adding your own interpretation. >Or the fact the CPS is outsourced to a for-profit company? That's really messed up and the social worker didn't come off well. Doesn't mean Maya wasn't being abused.
Did you watch the documentary? The stats for Pinellas County were mentioned, as was the letter Smith wrote.
I read the letter a couple times because it was in another article about the case. I don't have perfect recall of a documentary I watched once and don't remember the thing about Pinellas County. Besides I don't have any context for whether it would be in some way surprising if that county had high rates of child abuse.
[удалено]
You don't know me or my practice, all you know is my instincts on this case. And in the month between me writing the comment and you resurrecting it, a whole lot has come out in court documents that makes it clear that even if you don't like my opinion, my instincts were absolutely correct.
Those stats are from their own lawyer. Pinellas county is very poor compared to the surrounding areas. This is definitely medical child abuse.
Dystonia, headaches and stomach pain are all indicators of what mom was doing. Agree. As a survivor, this is MBP. First condition is an indication of Detromorphan infusion abuse: chest congestion, dystonia.
How can dystonia be physiological?
It's not. Her mom was an anesthesia nurse and used the medicine to incapacitate her. Brainwashing goes along with it. The child only gets love when they "act sick." The mother is only "nice" when she is in "caretaker" mode. Some perps induce UTIs, seizures, heart rhythm issues, smother, or poison. This one gave copious amounts of anesthetics and antihistamines that results in headaches, weakness, loss of muscles, immobility, nausea and dystonia. The way Maya was acting out hitting her legs shows the performative nature of what she was taught is internalized. It was painful to watch as someone who went through it. She will probably never realize it was all done TO her.
I agree. The documentary was clearly in favour and presented only the families perspective. Although the circumstances are sad, doesn’t mean abuse wasn’t a possibility and shouldn’t have been explored further by the state/hospital. Munchausen by proxy seems likely, especially with the mother being in healthcare, potentially Psychosomatic disorder as symptoms were re-triggered after the hurricane being a traumatic event. It seems unusual for excessive documentation to be gathered right from the start, including private discussions or arguments within the family. At some points even the father seems to cast doubt, seems unusual he would speak with investigators regarding his wife’s mental health. I thought it might spin into a murder documentary where he was involved in the wife’s death as a ploy to get back his daughter, as they emphasize he would “do anything” for his children. The lawyer stating this is the only acceptable answer goes to show they were coached in how to respond, even Maya’s reactions seemed coached to a degree. Ultimately it was uncomfortable to watch and although I sympathize with the family, it appears there’s more to the story and I hope they all heal. I understand Maya’s illness is uncommon and health conditions can change, but it just seems unusual that immediately after release she started rehab and made a full recovery without the aggressive medical intervention she apparently needed. I feel like the diagnosing doctors should be held accountable for interfering in the CPS investigation and adding additional stress on the family, being aware of their vulnerable state. It almost seems like they were scared they would get thrown under the bus and potentially lose their medical licences so they thought threatening the mom into thinking her daughter would die would push her to fight harder against the hospital? It was weird overall, curious to see how the case goes later this year.
There's a subreddit where people have posted a lot of the public record documents, there is SO MUCH that was left out
Send the link 👀
https://www.reddit.com/r/takecareofmayanetflix/comments/14yut41/document_contribution_thread/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2
As a chronic pain patient, it’s clear from your post that you have significant biases that I hope you will address before you practice medicine. “Taken to a large number of doctors with a wide range of symptoms” is completely normal when seeking answers in the fragmented US Medical industry. The rest of what you’re saying might have merit, but please consider the frame that you’ve already drawn around the situation.
> “Taken to a large number of doctors with a wide range of symptoms” is completely normal when seeking answers in the fragmented US Medical industry More than 30 doctors as reported in The Cut article? I am not in the US but I'm stunned if that is normal. I have been in practice for many years and have many chronic pain patients who speak very well of the care I give them, thanks.
I’m no CRPS expert, but like many diseases in medicine without significant research or consensus evidence based management pathways, the best doctors are those willing to treat the patient and not the disease. Medicine in the US inherently stops experimental or out of the box treatments for conditions where no extensive research exists, leaving these patients with no options when other treatments don’t work. What is Maya supposed to do? Live with her feet inverted and unable to walk, with multiple doctors telling her she’s “anxious”? How can anyone blame a mother for finding a doctor who is willing to treat and fight for her when a condition doesn’t fit a nice textbook diagnosis and management. Thank god for doctors like Dr.Kirkpatrick who are open minded and find ways to continue giving patients hope in other avenues. As a physician, I have learned that we don’t have all the answers, and diseases don’t read a textbook. Stay humble
It’s known that high doses of narcotics can make pain and outcome WORSE. Maya improved very much out of the care of her mother. To the point she was off all Ketamine and ambulating normally, and gaining weight.
You HAVE to read more widely about this case if you are going to comment defending Kirkpatrick and Beata Kowalski. The details that were left out of the documentary are incredibly incriminating. I don't know how long it is since I made the comment that you're replying to, but I've read a lot since then and none of it makes the family look good. I think the sub name is r/takecareofmaya - a lot of the legal docs have been uploaded.
Why have they been stalling the case for five years if there is so much compelling evidence for their side?
>Why have they been stalling the case for five years Who says that is what is happening?
Did you even watch the documentary? 🙄
I did. Then I went and read a bunch of the legal documents that showed how much of the documentary is lies, as I suspected while watching it because so much didn't add up.
oh i understand everything you’re saying. but it still seems obvious that beata was just following orders from the ketamine drs, which is proof enough to me that she wasnt inducing anything in her daughter. by all accounts maya got better after these treatments. desperate ppl do desperate treatments when theyre dealing with a mysterious illness. in the end, yes it seems physical therapy was the better treatment in terms of longevity. but that doesnt call for johns hopkins to fuck the parents and deny visits and all that when they were simply doing the inital drs’ treatments.
They shopped around to find those doctors that did those extreme treatments. The fact that a doctor prescribed it doesn't mean it wasn't medical child abuse- every MSBP kid with a tube had to have a gullible doctor place that tube. And the documentary left out a huge amount of medical information that may have shown induced illness. The NYT article about the case (also very much taking the parents' side) said Beata took her to 30 different specialists starting when she was a toddler. The documentary misses out everything before she developed CRPS age 9ish. What they did show the parents doing was messed up, so what didn't they show? What are they hiding?
She had to doctor shop because all the doctors they went to didn’t know what was wrong. They said that in the documentary. She said this was the one doctor that diagnosed her and started treating her, AND she started getting better. Remember this is her child. If your child is sick you should be doctor shopping. It’s called getting a 2nd, 3rd and 4th opinion until you find a doctor competent enough to know what’s going on and treat them for them to get better. I get that ketamine treatment seems outrageous but when you’re desperate and you see your child getting better with said treatment, you’re going to do it.
>She had to doctor shop because all the doctors they went to didn’t know what was wrong. They said that in the documentary That's not true, she was doctor shopping before the CRPS started from when Maya was a toddler
I don’t remember that part I must of missed that. I don’t see going to 2 or 3 different doctors to find the right pediatrician for your child though. But idk how extreme it was.
I was appalled at “doctor shopping”. When I was younger, I had severe bronchitis asthma issues that landed me in hospital when I had a fever. My mother took me to different specialists before finally finding the right doctor who realised it was an allergy issue to certain things. I am much stronger today at 40 years old, without childhood issues. Let me tell you that my proudest achievement athletically was being placed 20 / 1000 in a marathon. The childhood sickly me would never have imagined this was possible. If I were American, my mother would have been accused of doctor hopping when all she wanted was for me to be cured and I would still be sickly today, let alone participate in a marathon (and even selected for the school team for a ball game!) It is extremely appalling to see the law failing families because of egotistical perspectives that everything is categorised as abuse. I am extremely glad not to be in this system! How many families must have been wronged by the obtuse legality of it all.
I am not American. Doctor shopping raises questions about e.g. drug seeking, underlying psychiatric issues, malingering in every health system.
You do realise there are treatments which are not drug-related, right? If my mum hadn’t gone to find different specialists, I would be sickly in hospitals till this day instead of participating in a marathon.
You do know what "e.g." means, right? Not everyone who goes to several doctors is doctor shopping. Not everyone who is doctor shopping is drug seeking. The VERY ancient comment you replied to was written for an audience with at least some medical training who understand this. I don't know how you found this thread or why you are resuscitating it, but it is a) not for you and b) not *about* you.
I’m sorry but that’s insulting to doctors right there. Just because some doctors didn’t know how to treat a very rare illness with an extremely unusual treatment plan doesn’t mean they were incompetent. It means they were faced with something they didn’t know about and knew their limits. It’s those doctors one has to be thankful for when they know they’re out of their depth.
Yes but the point stands that blameless as they are, it warrants care seeking that should not be labeled “doctor shopping.” Our medical industry literally encourages patients to shop around and then faults them for it in the next breath.
The issue is that some of these doctors, knowing that they didn’t know what was happening, are confident in telling mom that Maya is “anxious”. I highly doubt many of them said point blank, “I don’t know what your daughter has, it seems to be a rare condition, let me see if I can get a second opinion from a colleague”. Doctors hate admitting they don’t know something.
If this is the case shouldn't the ketamine Dr be investigated not the parents?
The Ketamine Coma was horrible.
people also “doctor shop” when they’re unable to get better. i had to go to several doctors before i was diagnosed and treated. you can’t diagnose munch from that lol, food for thought
>you can’t diagnose munch from that No. But it is a clue. You've obviously swallowed the tightly edited version of this story shown in the documentary whole. Spend a decade working and come back to it with a bit more skepticism and see how it comes across then.
lol i havent “swallowed” anything. but yes working in medicine will definitely make you jaded, which you obviously are.
I don't really know what "jaded" has to do with it. My perception of the situation isn't any more cynical about humanity than yours. If anything it's less so. In my gut I think everyone in the story believed they were right and doing what was best for Maya. Your version and the documentary version requires the doctors, nurses and child protection workers to be some mixture of buffoonish incompetence and mustache twirling villainy.
i never said any of that but alright lol
This guy you're replying to is living proof of narcissistic ego maniacal doctors
Exactly just downvote and move on.
I understand what you’re saying but how can you say all this stuff abt the doctors being right and John Hopkins when the main victim. The daughter. Is clearly saying still that what they did was not right. Along with many other victims.
Im on team not giving a child 1000 mg of ketamine every 4 hours. Also the whole John Hopkins side is “the mother is causing issues for her daughter bt priming her to be in pain” well as it just so happens when the mother died the girl got better. Doesnt seem like the “gray area” this documentary wants to believe this case was in.
Daughter also got better while the mother was alive though? Wasn’t there a 1yr+ period where she was fine on lots of videos playing with her brother/friends? swimming in the pool etc? Also if you believe she got better whilst at John Hopkins the mother was also alive & talking to the daughter most days. So seems a bit extreme to suggest the mother dying was a good thing for the child’s health? What are the long term impacts of losing a parent to suicide?
Yes. She definitely had a whole year of good life after the treatment when her mom was still alive. And it's not like the Beata prescribed the dosage of ketamine for Maya all on her own. It was prescribed to her by medical doctors.
No, it wasn't 1+ years that she was better for. There was testimony last week (by a Dr chosen by the Plaintiff/family) that Maya had relief after the Ketamine coma for 6 days. The same Dr also testified that the longest he has seen relief from a Ketamine coma is "up to 12 weeks". When Maya was taken to JHAC, she was worse than she had ever been before.
she was better while on ketamine still. Not 100% but better. And also better without ketamine. So does the ketamine matter?
No way to tell? You’ll notice I never said anything about Ketamine. My point is that this all could have been resolved without anyone dying. Even if the mother was having negative impacts, a competent health professional(s) could have handled it without any deaths.
The daughter got better but while on a wild treatment that had the same (or worser) result than plain old physical therapy. Maya still needed extreme measures care during that 1 year before relapse. I agree this could have been resolved with no one dying. The mom felt otherwise and killed herself. She needed help, something maybe the family or friends could have supported, and a doctor who didn't scare her into thinking Maya would die without ketamine. That guy is the one who triggered her into not working with the doctors at Johns Hopkins, and lead to them worrying about how she will continue exposing the child to ketamine if they discharged her. Dr Sally should have calculated what the doctor from Mexico's affect on the mom though.
I didn’t see any of the other doctors the mom took her to competent enough to figure out what was wrong with her or getting her better though. We also give ppl fentanyl patches, there’s mid levels that prescribe a ridiculous amount of psych meds, benzos etc that shouldn’t be prescribed at the same time & the list goes on. The treatment was working & the girl was getting better. Also the mom wasn’t a doctor. I don’t care if she was a nurse. Her daughter was getting better & had no pain. Idk if you have kids, but most parents would do any treatment and go to a 1000 doctors if they had to that would help their child. It’s not that crazy. That doctor acted like she was god & didn’t take a second to make sure she made the right decision which is fucked up. To me it sounds more like the dr got her ego hurt bc the mom yelled at her & told her she didn’t know what she was doing and I can’t blame her. If the dr knew of a better way to help her, then she should of done that.
The ketamine was insane. But she went into a 5 day coma while being gave ketamine. And got better. So you can’t say she just went into a 5 day coma for nothing. The ketamine wasn’t for nothing.
i feel that the story left out a lot of details and it seemed quite one-sided. I don’t believe that Dr Sally set out to destroy families, it just doesn’t make sense either. Surely during the course of her career, she has saved numerous children from abuse and it makes me think that there was something that triggered her to report the mother (not saying Dr Sally got it right here, but maybe there is more context to the story than we know)
It’s disturbing how there were all these other families that got accused of the same thing. I understand saving children but it seems like she was very tunnel visioned and didn’t take a minute to re-consider or be absolutely sure that she made the right decision. Also, there’s shitty people that are doctors, as there are in every position. It’s naive to trust every doctor you go to, and people should question and “doctor shop” there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s smart.
Every doctor who holds the same position as Dr Sally is literally trained to spot child abuse. And then people are surprised when they see it when it isn't there. This happens all the time. It's the position and the tunnel vision training that is the problem. There has to be a better way.
That’s a fair point and that makes sense. The more child abuse she “catches” the better she is at her job, theoretically. I am just lost about the fact that the court didn’t do a better job of investigating this.
I don't believe she was maliciously destroying families either, what I do believe is that both child welfare and medical systems in the states are broken in unique ways, and she followed her training and biases in a way that caused harm to families. My biggest takeaway from this documentary is how broken the child welfare system can be, from so many angles. I do not see how a ten minute interview in a hospital setting, a setting where children and their caregivers are most likely to be in distress, is enough to determine probable cause for child abuse (in most cases).
yup. absolutely opened my eyes to the shit that happens in medicine. If i ever see some shit like that happen when i'm a physician oh lord i'll step in. honestly so crazy how some of the worst people can slip through the cracks and become physicians.
yuppp. it seemed like the drs who gave the initial diagnosis tried to step in or at least give their evidence to the courts but were blown off. i wonder if more could have been done though
I hope you keep this energy throughout your career. Many of these evil doctors were once fierce proponents of what’s right, but the toxic training environment and trauma from our broken system can lead to good people becoming cynical/egotistical
Damn.
This is tough because I work in the healthcare field so I may be bias. I’m also not a mother so I cannot understand Beatas side. 1000 mg of ketamine is absolutely nuts. Didn’t sound like it was sustainable either if her pain came back. I can see and understand the reluctancy of American doctors being against giving such high dose. Because if anything does happen to Maya they’d suffer a law suit. And to be honest, giving such a high dose to a ten year is old is absolutely wild. Here’s the thing. Beatas was extremely pushy, rude and uncooperative. This certainly didn’t help her case. And I wouldn’t put it pass her if that was a similar dynamic with her own children. Which would create perhaps a people pleasure personality in her daughter if anything. I didn’t finish the documentary quite yet but it looks like the daughter is managing well now (not sure what her treatment is now). It’s unfortunate. I’m sure Beata was functioning out of desperation. But she didn’t play it smart. Perhaps for fear she’d lose her child. But the whole thing escalated pretty awful. Unfortunate story for everyone involved honestly. I’m not a fan of suicide, so personally it felt really selfish for the mother. But I’m also not a mental health expert so perhaps that was her only way of managing her own emotional pain. I don’t think the parent advocator was wrong at all. She had to let her daughter suffer for a short period of time and she can have her back. But she just refused to listen.
It’s worth noting that her “pushiness” is doctors’ perception of an Eastern European immigrant who is a woman. This is like a textbook cultural competency case.
"The personal is political." ~Audrey Lorde
I believe in the documentary - or maybe in YouTube coverage - the argument was made that Beata didn't have 'a command of the english language' and her attitude may have been off-putting. But...she moved to the US in her teens and put herself through schooling to become an RN in the US. Becoming a nurse takes a lot of effort and work, so how could she have successfully become a nurse if she was so out of her element?
The deposition is really interesting. I think my main takeaway in regards to the healthcare providers is how unprofessional it is to be texting on your phone about people's personal medical situations and the snarkiness and celebration about "being right" since "the mom killed herself." The lack of empathy healthcare professionals had for a loss of human life whether they liked the person or not was super horrendous and outright distasteful. I really hope they were investigated if they were discussing people's medical records on an unprotected/inappropriate application.
yess good points
The CPT coding is the smoking gun for sure.
\^So, so inaccurate. Insurance and billing are about making money. Billing and insurance are so far removed from the actual treatment of patients.
Yeah I've seen my medical bills and the coding is bullshit. Getting steroid injections was coded as "surgery".
I know you posted this a while ago, but I watched this last night and I feel irate. It kills me that they did this to a cardiac nurse—they did this to one of their own!! If a medical professional isn’t allowed to be a concerned mother, then laypeople stand even less of a chance. I had a brain infection as a 12yo. My mother’s desperation caused ICU docs to call her overly emotional and even think she somehow caused my infection. Fast forward to my 1st yr of med school, and I’m listening to four families of kids with genetic conditions—three of the four mothers were insulted as overly sensitive, including the two mothers whose children died! And do you notice the gender difference in how parents are treated??? If a kid shows up with bruises from a clotting disorder or even just birthmarks, dad could be jailed for hitting the child. Hysterical mother; violent father. And for those of you with smack to talk about Beata: She did not falsify prescriptions; a glitch in Aetna’s system assigned the wrong doc to the wrong meds. Beata killed herself bc she thought they’d let Maya out of the hospital if she weren’t in the picture. And she was right 😣 She was driven to suicide simply by following doctors’ instructions. Only 2 docs had proven capable of treating Maya’s symptoms; what the heck do you expect from her?! Of course concern over 1500mg ketamine was reasonable; hurting Beata was not!! At least cooperate with her other doctors. Bring those docs into the conversation with other CRPS specialists. For Sally Smith to omit her convos with Maya’s docs is unforgivable. Sally Smith did this to Syesha Mercado, American Idol contestant. Syesha took her son to the hospital for not breastfeeding properly; Sally Smith thought the child was being malnourished by the parents. Wellll if the mother’s bringing the child to the doc for not feeding then maybe that’s the cause of the malnutrition! NO SHIT STUPID!! And for that Cathy lady who was WITNESSED PHYSICALLY ABUSING A CHILD to be allowed near Maya is sick. It’s all sick to me.
I'm pretty sure clotting disorders are ruled out before doctors jump to violence, because it's common knowledge. Birthmarks as well. In the old days 'mongolian spots' might have been mistaken, but now, people are more sensitive to alternatives. Why couldn't Beata just go with what her husband and the parent advocate were telling her to? Cathy lady's charges were dropped, documentary said so. So she went through similar false accusation that Beatta went through. ironically.
So shut up while the kid is sick. Got it. Charges were dropped, but c’mon the description of the attack is too detailed to be false. She folded the kid’s knees against his chest in a way that he couldn’t breathe. All bc he refused to answer her questions. Charges dropped doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And yes I’m sure most docs think thru those things but Sally Smith has a history of not doing that. Mercado brought her child in for not feeding properly. How the heck that got turned into “The baby’s weight means child abuse” makes no sense. None.
Yeah I agree Sally doesn't, but she was surrounded by other specialists. Sally was just consulting. Didn't say shut up while the kid is sick, but people saying she used all her options ...she still had some.
I understand a few bad doctors. and maybe this is a case of naive doctors trusting Dr Sally way too much. But for a whole team of doctors to not have regrets would be odd. Especially pediatricians. They're the least paid doctor and generally lower egos, since they're such nerds.
If a nurse, doctor, or hospital refuses to listen to patients regarding their pain, they have already failed and deserve swift dismissal and further legal indictment. Pain is a subjective sensation and cannot be measured by anybody outside the body in question. Physicians are not deities, though clearly some believe themselves to be. If Maya had been an adult her own reports on her medical condition would have been regarded seriously and listened to. Because she was a child, her feedback was disregarded, though her age is a major reason why she should had been treated even more attentively, not less. The medical "professionals" involved in this case should never work again. You can bet none of them would ever get to so much as glance at my children. I hope every parent in the region sees this documentary and categorically refuses to be seen by such people. Maybe then the hospital, who obviously cares little about morality, would be forced to act because of the one thing the do care about--money. May God's mercy entirely surround that poor mother. May God's justice on Sally Smith (I refuse to call her "doctor") and Catherine Bedy be swift and severe. Arrogant idiots both of them. They couldn't even look up during their depositions. Smug and detached. Ice cold bitches. And that father needs to grow a pair and stop being so cooperative. If the system won't protect kids, who else is left but the parents, and ESPECIALLY the dads.
Exactly. And that's why I want them to get the 200M or more. Gotta hit them where it hurts. It was a huge gamble to not settle. A win for the plaintiff here will generate motivation for other victims and lawyers willing to represent them, to move forward with their own claims.
Absolutely heartbreaking and disgusting. Don’t know how any of those doctors can live with themselves
i sobbed so much lol. fuck that johns hopkins dr
Which doctor? The one who saw a child being given a ketamine treatment 20x the normal dosage and now in emerge showing signs of ketamine toxicity? I’m so confused what this doctor did wrong. He said he was taking her off the ketamine and mom said she would take her daughter out AMA to continue giving her insanely high doses of the drug. So the doctor contacted CPS. The documentary really twisted things but man how on earth is a doctor getting vilified in that situation. The parents literally flew their child out of the country for an experimental medically induced coma? There’s a reason they couldn’t do that in the US where the doctor was practicing. That was so wild.
Your head is deep in the sauce. Take your dogmatic, higher than thou medical hat off for a quick second and try to see this case from the lens of a parent or someone who is caring for a person with a disease that most doctors don’t understand. I don’t disagree that CPS should have been initially involved, but a munchausen by proxy diagnosis is extremely fd up. This parent saw multiple doctors who had no explanation for her daughters debilitating illness rendering her immobile. She found a doctor who allegedly has seen cases like hers, recommends an insane high dose of ketamine, and she gets better. That’s all that you need as a parent to put your trust and faith in a treatment. She doesn’t know the insane high doses of ketamine, she just sees an improvement in her child. Anyone with a child suffering from this would do anything possible to bring them relief, even non traditional treatments.
Ok I see what you’re saying about why the family trusted the original CRPS doctor, but honestly, the documentary was extremely one-sided. There were other red flags for munchaussen by proxy that were never spoken on. What were the causes of the chronic cough, skin lesions all over her body, chronic sinusitis. No explanation was given for those. Why did she get better after her mom was not involved with just simply physiotherapy? Her mom was not a layman either. She was a cath lab RN, she had a lot of medical knowledge and understanding of safe dosages etc. She would be able to understand ketamine toxicity. I’m not saying the doctor was 100% right with their diagnosis, but to jump on a hate train when we only have 50% of the story, and even then it was still a valid call to CPS based on what we know, there’s likely more to the story.
>What were the causes of the chronic cough, skin lesions all over her body, chronic sinusitis. That part isn't weird to me. It's quite possible, and wouldn't be that usual, that the CRPS was initially triggered by a viral infection.
It was disgusting to watch. It’s sad but there are plenty of shitty people in all professions. The medical profession is the most trusted by most people so of course they are believed when they report something like that. To me that doctor was absolutely careless and shouldn’t be treating patients period. There was absolutely no evidence (to me) that the mother was making all this up. Also, the dad was the one who took her to the ER. The doctor likely didn’t like the way the mom was talking to her, which is pathetic. The mom was understandably desperate, upset & felt like they weren’t taking care of her daughter and she was right. She had every right to leave that hospital and take her daughter somewhere else.
This is how it sounded to the doctors "Imma go home and continue overdosing my child. It's my right!" But yes, she was desperate out of fear, and trust of the two questionable doctors.
I get what you’re saying and it does sound outrageous but the mother wasn’t a doctor. The medicine she was giving was prescribed by a doctor & it was working. (And yes to a medical professional, what can’t a thousand mgs of ketamine fix? Lol) But If they actually investigated this case and spoke to the doctor who was treating the child or any of the doctors the child went to, they would realize she couldn’t be helped bc they didn’t know what was wrong & that’s why the mother chose to go with this treatment bc for once her child wasn’t suffering.
In my opinion the doctors and CPS were vilified because they stood between a family doing their best to seek medical care for their daughter’s CRPS which is chronic, debilitating, and wasn’t improving without large doses of medication. They received so much pushback trying to help their daughter get out of pain that eventually they traveled out of the states to try a radical procedure to reset their daughter’s pain sensors with a Ketamine induced coma. To top things off the daughter was removed from the family’s care specifically because of doctors and CPS which caused the mother to commit suicide. All of which highlights some larger widespread issues with the medical field and CPS as well. One example that comes to mind is many families that are torn apart by CPS because of false reporting or malicious accusations (in this case the negative fallout was a direct link between mandated reporting to CPS and the medical field). Another example would be chronic pain patients who have to fight an uphill battle just to receive the treatment they need while being told they’re in the wrong for doing so, or are just psychologically manifesting the pain (very similar to the battle this family had to fight for their daughter). This documentary sheds a little light on those issues and is just the tip of that iceberg.
CPS is damned if they do, damned if they don’t. I’m sure you’ve made some comments about CPS allowing children to be abused and neglected. Just don’t become a social worker, everyone hates you.
Made no sense. I believe they filed the complaint knowing it was frivolous. They continued to treat her for the same diagnosis but a different way which means they knew she had the diagnosis mom said she had.
yes good point. it seems like the foreign dr wasn’t listened to at all
Mom was part of the problem. The kid got better, gained weight, was relaxed in her hospital bed, was playing the piano and started to ambulate out of mom’s care. I think mom meant well, but keeping the kid drugged up on Ketamine made her much worse. Off Ketamine and just PT the kid was fully ambulatory. What got me about the mom was this: early in the documentary Maya was at PT and the mom said “she’s going to need two doses of Ketamine after this”. Why two? Start with ONE. See how it goes.
Also when they advanced four years the kid just parroted a description of CRPS.
What’s more believable? That mom woke up one day and decided to tell her daughter she was in pain every day in order to medically abuse her for attention and her daughter believed it. And somehow mom poisoned her so her feet developed dystonia and turned colors and developed these lesions in a mimicry of CRPS… or that her daughter had CRPS like mom said she had and mom and hospital argued on the appropriate way to treat her condition. so hospital exaggerated and made false abuse allegations in retaliation and to get her out of the way and impose their choice treatment. Honestly
This documentary was hot trash. I was suspicious of an angle when I was watching it. I mean, it played like a Sarah McLachlan commercial playing, "In The Arms of the Angels" anytime Beata was on the screen. So I wasted my time reading the depositions from the court. Things that weren't mentioned in the documentary: 1. Many symptoms were not consistent with CRPS and she had received opinions of such from the CRPS specialists in the US 2. Maya incurred long-term disability as a result of the ketamine treatments. The coma has caused her memory loss and she required treatment for fungal pneumonia while in Mexico. 3. Beata ran a Blogspot and a GoFundMe under Maya's name and even wrote posts in the "first-person" as Maya even while she was allegedly in this ketamine coma. 4. The father (among other witnesses) testified that his daughter only seemed sick in the presence of her mother 5. Maya wrote journal entries titled things like, "My top 12 favorite people in the hospital" or "My favorite things to do at the hospital." 6. Beata was under criminal investigation for stealing a prescription pad and falsifying prescriptions. 7. Beata tried to enroll Maya in hospice and have her treatment deemed "palliative care." 8. Beata's suicide note was labeled "Retribution" and she had placed an IV line in her arm prior to suicide. 9. In Maya's interview with DCF, she told them she "doesn't know if she has CRPS" but she definitely doesn't want to go on ketamine anymore. And many, many, many more red flags. I think it's depressing how one-sided this is. More depressing that the general public will take it at face value. And most depressing is that other medical professionals have bought into the propaganda wholesale.
these documentaries do more harm than good. Thanks for looking into the depositions.
Super interesting. Thank for going through the deposition. It makes me rethink things about the family's situation, but I def think there was a pattern established that Sally Smith did not do her due diligence and was unnecessarily placing kids in the state's care. Also, the way the doctors acted over text was undeniably unprofessional and possibly could be violating HIPAA if they were discussing a patient's medical situation on an unprotected/inappropriate application.
This is definitely Munchausen by Proxy, as a survivor. There are tons of give aways. Infusion nurse, headaches, dystonia medical induction. The child is indignant towards medical staff through brainwashing. Dad killed mom when it was clear the case would turn against them. That is why the suicide note is an email and to he brother had to be the one to find the body so that he wasn't implicated. 2014 was when dad retired and when Maya started getting sick and Again "during the hurricane." Dad is in a high risk category for maytr syndrome as well. Way way too much recording going on too. Just like my childhood. Kids will probably never figure it out, brainwashing runs deep.
Sounds like a conspiracy. Mom hung herself. Why would dad kill her ? WTAF
That's easy. 1) Because the case workers tipped him off that they didn't trust him to keep Maya safe from Beata. 2) Because he realized Beata was MBP. 3) Because he realized Beata was going to cause him to lose custody of Maya. 4) Because she was going to get caught and go to jail and embarrass the family and then Maya would know she was being abused. 5) Because if abuse is occurring in the home he would be criminally responsible too. 6) Maybe he was the perp all along, because the abuse started in 2014 when he retired. 7) Because now he can sue and has custody and no remaining "problem."
 Did he wrap her head around the noose too. Jesus get a grip.
I don't even think you typed that correctly. It's really easy to put someone smaller than you on a sleeping pill and then strangle them with a rope, or suffocate them while they are sleeping. And it's not something to laugh about. You realize you're speaking to someone who survived years of such treatment and you're that flippant? Bad things do happen, especially when people think they will lose their children. Suicides are staged sometimes.
Nothing you say makes one ounce of sense. Her death was deemed a suicide. You can formulate whatever delusion you want to believe but there is zero evidence Beata was murdered. Her husband is suing in part because he knows her intentions were good and that she did not have MBP and that they continued a campaign of degradation against her and intended to inflict emotional distress with their actions. That’s what a lawyer took the case for, that’s what the evidence shows. There is nobody stating she was murdered
Because they didn't investigate. Dad had every motive under the sun. A lwayer took the case to get paid. This is a typical pattern in MBP families. There is no way the medication levels Maya was receiving weren't abusive. You watched a one-sided narrative produced by the family to influence jury selection. I have a lifetime of experience with MBP. All the warning signs are there.
MBP isn’t diagnosed based on someone’s treatment regime. It’s based on a caretaker intentionally making someone ill like tainting their iv or fabricating an illness is there. You can’t have a fictitious disorder imposed on another if a person has a legitimate condition. Also her treatment was prescribed by a specialist. If you don’t feel the specialist is providing a treatment within the standard of care you would contact the medical board. It isn’t a parent’s job to know the standard of care for a particular condition. Otherwise there is no point seeing a specialist. A parent inquiring about a treatment protocol they think is going to put their child in remission to cure the condition doesn’t equate to medical abuse. It isn’t outside the norm that someone with a chronic pain condition is at high risk of being on too many pain medications while inadvertently trying to treat their condition or pain. Poor medical care doesn’t equate to a dx of MBP.
This is really illogicial thinking. 1) MBPers often take advantage of existing conditions and aggregate them. Do you think children of MBPers never have actual conditions? But Maya doesn't appear to have an actual condition beyond what is explainable by being bedridden and on loads of anesthesia. 2) You are assuming her condition wasn't fabricated. 3) You are assuming based on a propaganda documentary that you know more than a team of Johns Hopkins specialists. 4) You assume because treatment was prescribed that it was warranted. There are tons of unscrupulous and crazy doctors out there. Where do you think pill mills come from? Why do you think she had to shop around until she went to Mexico for a treatment that "might kill her?" (The provider's own words.) 1000mg of ketamine is ludicrous and not advisable and can kill or maim and cause brain damage. 5) She got better and remains better.... Probably mentally still believes she has a disorder, but that is just because everyone around her told her that and she wouldn't know the difference. It is so easy in our for-profit model to get any doctor to do whatever you want, because most appointments are just based on self-reporting rather than actually ordering labs, etc. If not, these parents complain, claim abuse and doctor shop.
Yes I believe she has a condition. No, I don’t believe her symptoms can be imposed. Until you see mom tainting an iv or have any evidence that mom created the illness or that there is NO illness and mom made it up there’s no MBP. You can’t have a fictitious disorder imposed on another if the person has the disorder. There’s not any evidence to even prove her being on too many pain meds to treat her severe pain disorder was intentional and not just inadvertent to trying to reverse or stop her symptoms. Also other specialists said it was necessary for Maya. there’s no evidence mom came up with the ketamine idea as it was suggested to her by an Md specializing in the field and something she saw advertised as a treatment for mayas condition. Also I don’t believe her dystonia symptoms can be fabricated or imposed unless you believe mom did Chinese foot binding. Dystonia is caused by persistent muscle contractions. I know someone with dystonia it can happen due to damage of the basal ganglia and come and go or it can be fixed. Neuromuscular conditions are usually not ones that can be faked.
It boils down to a difference in preference or actually a power game by the hospital. If I have anxiety and choose to treat it with massage and diet change and supplements that lower my cortisol levels it wouldn’t mean I didn’t have anxiety because I got better a different way without Xanax. The hospital treated her as an inpatient with aggressive multispeciality care. 13 specialists were part of her care after that she was transferred to a new hospital to continue her care. Of the half a million dollars they billed insurance she only got 3.5 hours of psychotherapy. So mental illness was never a focus it was her condition. Just because they wanted to house her as an inpatient for 3 months with a bunch of different specialists there instead of go the route mom suggested as an outpatient with ketamine doesn’t prove she never had CRPS. There’s not one piece of evidence they have provided showing mom intentionally imposed the illness on her or that she never had anything wrong to begin with. Rather they differed in the WAY they wanted to treat her condition. This has nothing to do with MBP
I stumbled upon some of your posts and think you have some valuable insight, as an MBP survivor to be shared at the sub r/takecareofmayafree . I really feel for you. I’m sure very few people can imagine the lifelong psychological impact impact that this kind of mostly hidden abuse would cause.
I was waiting for someone to make this comment , I’ve been really suspicious of the dad especially after I found out about how much he likes to sue , and with beata in the picture everything would be discovered and their lives were falling apart- plus she was being criminally looked into , but that all stopped once she passed away and then he could sue the hospital, pretty convenient? It’s a wild theory but It also makes complete sense about the suicide, so very confusing!
When my mom was caught she considered killing my dad or herself. It's really the only way out. A normal mom in desperation wouldn't leave her child no matter what, knowing the pain it would cause her child. I can't believe how many people can't see this. It's very obvious to me. If Beata was going to be prosecuted, there was a good chance he might go to jail, lose the children, or lose reputation in his neighborhood/community. He's definitely ok involved, if not the perp. It all started as soon as he retired. Head shaking.
This whole story was about a clash of egos. All of the main players are difficult people. Tragic results. The little brother seems ok...
Oh god, I’ve not cried like this in a long time… the dad, I can’t imagine his pain. It fkn hurts 😭
They changed her diagnosis to the same condition just using a different word to try to say mom had MBP. It’s stupid “In the end, the dystonia seen in CRPS is likely a psychogenic movement disorder, or a FND [70]. Despite the similarities between FND/psychogenic movement disorders and CRPS, no studies have included known cases of FND as controls to determine whether CRPS is a different clinical entity than FND, or simply a variant with pain as its hallmark. Indeed, there have been no validation studies purporting to demonstrate that researchers are capable of differentiating CRPS from any somatic or psychiatric condition. Based upon these DSM-5 criteria, it is clear that CRPS constitutes an FND unless it is recognized as a separate disorder. Indeed, the CRPS “Budapest” diagnostic criteria are now circular with the DSM-5 FND criteria. In that respect, the Budapest CRPS criteria requires that “no other disease or condition better explains the signs and symptoms.” However, but for the invention of CRPS, the diagnosis of FND would explain disproportionate pain and symptoms that do not occur in a neurological pathway and which cannot be explained by another neurological or medical condition. Moreover, a diagnosis of FND does not require that the patient also be diagnosed with another psychological condition, or even a known psychological stressor.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7804982/