Netflix’s top-notch documentary, Take Care of Maya, was excruciatingly painful for me to watch because it hit so close to home. I related on many levels: the disease, maltreatment from health care professionals, being labeled crazy, the family breakdown, and pursuit of justice. But the dagger to my heart was the price paid for a mother’s love.
Like me, the protagonist, Maya Kowalski, has Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), but the over-riding message of the film is about something far more insidious. It lays out the abusive extremes some health and social care systems take to make a buck at the cost of patients and their families. Sometimes that price can be unimaginable.
In Maya’s case, her parents were falsely accused of child abuse, specifically making their daughter ill for their own gain, a disorder known as Munchausen by Proxy. This misguided allegation led Maya to being kidnapped by hospital administrators, who, in turn, barred her from seeing her family, all the while the ten year-old’s physical and emotional pain became increasingly worse.
It was horrifying to watch Maya’s family unravel under the strain of this prolonged nightmare, in particular, her bold and unflinching mother Beata’s relentless confrontations with the powers that be. After multiple failed attempts to reverse matters in the courts, Beata, the focus of the abuse allegations and the target of the hospital’s ire, became increasingly despondent to the point (***spoiler alert***) she hanged herself to give her daughter the best chance of getting back home.
I’m guessing that many who watched the documentary found its facts too fantastic to be true – and there was a time when I might have agreed with them. But I’ve lived too much of this story to question it now.
In my early 20’s when it was clear my unnamed disease wasn’t going away, my mother became progressively distraught over watching my life slip down the rabbit hole. It’s fair to say my recovery came to be her over-riding obsession.
Mom wrote 200+ searing letters, sometimes demanding, at others begging my HMO to diagnose and treat me. She spent large swaths of those years on the phone in desperate attempts to get me, as she coined them, “no-care” appointments, all in the hope that a compassionate physician or administrator would at last hear her pleas and change my course.
My poor mother became more and more unglued and unwell from the abuse aimed first at me, then toward her, from this evil empire. She developed life-threatening heart problems and her legs, addled by aching varicose veins, went from bad to worse from constantly lifting me. Perhaps my most distressing memory of those dark days was when I’d hear her full-volume moans emanating from out-of-control sadness.
One day after my HMO dropped the ball on an appointment we’d driven miles to attend, Mom snapped with rage. With super human strength, she hoisted my 50-pound wheelchair in the parking lot and smashed it into her car. As I cried in fear, she repeatedly bashed away. “They don’t care about my daughter”, she screamed to the universe at large. “She’s dying. They’re killing my daughter.”
During this time, I was terrified for my mother’s life. Though it never crossed my mind she would take her own, I was hounded incessantly with the thought that she would succumb to a stroke or heart attack.
Maya’s mother made the ultimate sacrifice by taking her own life to save her daughter’s. Some might say that was tragically misguided, but I’m certain Beata’s intentions were true and real. My mother said to me on more occasions than I care to remember, “If cutting off my arm would make you well, I’d do it.” I never doubted her.
After fighting my HMO for nearly a decade with no tangible results, not even a diagnosis, my mom pulled up stakes, but in a different way than Beata. Mom moved to New York to pursue her long-delayed acting career. When I confronted her about feeling abandoned, she explained her reasoning. “Maybe if I go, you’ll get better by doing more for yourself.” It didn’t have to be logical.
In our mother’s desperation to somehow, someway right impossibly tragic situations for their daughters, both made questionable choices out of love. It’s true, the path to hell is paved with good intentions, especially where chaos and heartbreak intersect.
Like Maya, I couldn’t just fold tent and walk away from the institution that did me wrong. Sure, I wanted justice for me, but also for my mom. I became a spokesperson, a whistle-blower, for HMO reform in California, hell bent on exposing all of their atrocities.
I did get a number of licks in, multiple high-profile media stories that changed public opinion which, in turn, helped pave the way to sweeping legislative reform. But in retrospect, something I think of quite a bit these days, the cost was too high. I’m harassed by this entity to this day and they were successful in killing much of my most important work. In short, the fallout from my justice-seeking made me sicker and sadder over the decades, taking away more than it gave.
When I see Maya seeking justice in her mother’s name, I have great respect for her, but also concern. This now near-adult is in remission, and going forward, my prayer is that she puts her health front and center. After poignantly telling her story on a world-wide stage and prevailing in the courts (which I believe will mercifully happen soon), I hope Maya will step away with the knowing she’s done enough, and never looks back. It’s time to save herself.
It’s also time to grieve, maybe more than anything, the loss of a mother’s love.