The Controversial Disease with Illegal Symptoms

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[AlephTroll]

Gipsy killing her mom “Dee Dee” and then the ashes being flushed down the toilet by Dee Dees parents is the kind of justice I wish we saw more in these cases

[zerox]

I like the part where after she had 7 children die in her care the adoption agency was just like "here, try this one".

[randomdude-]

Imagine trying to beat some allegations and a doctor pulls up and diagnoses you with guilty syndrome

[Donkeybutter]

Watching this after Gypsy Rose is released adds a little bit more of a good ending for her story and I’m happy for her to start her life.

[acrab]

Yeah my mom did that. Poisoned everything she fed me from 1-10. Caught her doing it and didn't eat anything that didn't come out of a can or vacuum sealed container until 13 when my dad got custody. Surprise surprise I stopped vomiting every other day.

[bethanywoll]

I know a woman who's son was really sick, and although the doctors kept running tests, they didn't know what was wrong. A young doctor accused her of MBP, and she was investigated by CPS, and wasn't allowed to see her son for a week or 2. They realized that she wasn't actually doing anything to harm her son when her absence didn't miraculously cure her son; her remained sick. A year or 2 later he was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder. But the fact that she had been investigated by CPS was something that remained in some kind of file somewhere, and was like a stain she couldn't get rid of. She later found out the same doctor had accused multiple people of MBP around that time because he had seen a medical drama recently that featured it. There are so many ways that accusing someone of this can ruin lives.

[newttella]

the craziest part of all of this to me, is the doctors trying to help. I went to the doctor for 2 years, with constant pain, and they did nothing. It really felt like they stopped believing me. Why is it always the people who don't need help, are believed, and the ones who do, are called liars?

[Lori_Hanna]

I was very ill as a child. No one could figure out what was actually wrong with me. I would run high fevers, have stomach problems, gain weight and have severe pain.

They told my mother that I was faking it. Then send me to a psychiatrist. Then some of them thought it was my mom making me sick. They even put me into a psych ward on "suicide watch" so I couldn't "hurt" myself . I got bronchitis from that. So they could not tell if my fever was from me doing it or the bronchitis

My grandma made them release me. So I went to every doctor and shrink they sent me to. They would threaten my mom and me with jail. The shrinks actually told my mom to beat me if I didn't get up and go to school.

So after 10 YEARS of suffering they decided to take my appendix out. When they were doing a few scans and found a 13 POUND OVARIAN CYST. It was full of blood and leaking. It was entangled in all of my organs. The surgery was 8 hours and I was back in from internal bleeding.

The irony of it was that NOT ONE PERSON APOLOGIZED.

So sometimes it takes listening to do the right thing

[CallMeFreakFujiko]

"Her own father flushed her ashes down the toilet."
That's awful! How heartless do you have to be to not care about your toilet like that?!

[tadsgirl]

Munchausen by Proxy doesn't always involve death. My sister convinced the world that my nephew, who has poor eyesight, was blind. He took classes at our local sight center, had mostly blind friends and was told he would never ride a bike or drive a car. Today he drives and had strong glasses. He no longer speaks to her.

[kpturn]

My mother did this to me and my siblings, but she was a doctor and nobody questioned it. She told everyone around us that we were "low-functioning" autistic, and that we had gotten it from being vaccinated as children. My youngest sibling was never vaccinated for ANYTHING as a result, and we were all subjected to bizarre fringe "cures" for autism that mostly involved chelation treatments that made us sick. She thrived on the sympathy she got for having to "endure" the hardship of raising two "low-functioning" children, and how we were "victims" of Mercury in our vaccines. When people would meet us for the first time when we were growing up they would get very confused and comment on how we were well-spoken/articulate and how smart and observant we were, which was not at all what they were expecting. This eventually led to people no longer believing her. She gave up after a few years, but I can only imagine what might have happened to us if she hadn't lost that sympathetic attention she craved.

[YossDillo]

I'm glad you spoke on the whole "diagnosis that implies guilt" bit.
There are, right now, a bunch of families in I believe Pennsylvania who are fighting against a medical system, county, and specific doctor who has ruined their lives by diagnosing them with MBP/child abuse, without even talking to them! All they had to do is bring their child to the emergency room-for ANYTHING- and their lives are completely destroyed. A majority of these families seem to be ones with "medically complicated" children, or children proven by several medical professionals to actually have chronic illnesses. These children are denied necessary health care, torn from their families, and in worst case scenarios their family never sees them again and/or someone dies.
MBP is a highly dangerous diagnosis, just not for the reason a lot of people think, and I cannot appreciate enough how you went into the nuances of it.

[direcircumstances]

What happened to Gypsy Rose was on par with someone being held hostage and tortured for over 18 years. Anyone in that situation would be completely justified in wanting to kill the person victimizing them.

[CryptP]

Gypsy Rose Blanchard looks so so much healthier now, and knowing the American prison system, I think it says a lot about how much damage DeeDee was doing to her health

[ajmantis]

I had crohn’s disease as a kid but no one advocated for my symptoms besides me and my mother. once I was finally diagnosed after 5 years, I had a flare up with ulcers a couple years later. instead of just giving me some simple tests, they put me and my mom in therapy because they thought she had MBP, automatically assuming we/she was lying even though I was literally already diagnosed. MBP definitely does happen but I think it unfortunately contributes to sexism in the medical field especially for kids who can’t speak up for themselves who only have mama bear on their side.

[LokiMartin]

When I was 19, I was diagnosed with a chronic illness. During one of my hospital stays a few years ago, one of the nurses taking care of me approached one of my doctors and stated that she believed my mother had MBP and was making me sick because of how much she knew about my medical history, how attentive she was to me and how my mother was my only visitor. It took so much to prove that my mother knew so much about my medical history and spoke to the doctors about it because I have Autism and Anxiety disorder, so it's hard for me to advocate for myself, so my mother would step in where I was afraid to.

[regancambridge]

The most disturbing part of the gypsy rose case is the doctors giving her chemotherapy when they had no proof she had cancer

[allilee]

Doctors believed my mother had MBP when I was a baby, I was 13 pounds at a year old. They kept telling her she was over reacting or attention seeking. Mainly because she did a lot of research as a pre med student, and kept insisting it was this very specific heart defect, and she even pointed out all the various symptoms I was showing, and eventually built a family tree showing all the various deaths during infancy due to heart defects in our family tree lmaoooo. Lol turned out I had that extremely rare heart condition, and was actually the first infant to have the specific surgery I had done, the film they took of the surgery is still shown in surgical classes and labs today!!

[lyn.m.stuart]

I used to live in a small town in Iowa and we had a young girl who, when she was four, her mother told everyone she had cancer. I was in girl scouts at the time and even though she was too young we initiated her into the scouts and hosted many fundraisers for her treatment. The little girls name was Riley, and by all appearances she had cancer, she lost her hair, appeared very pale and sickly and even had a feeding tube. Our community, being so small, she was very well know and was sent to disney world and initiated as a firefighter. I still remember when my mom sat me down and told me that her cancer had progressed too far and she would not survive. (Also because we lived in a small town they would have to drive multiple hours to get to anywhere that would be able to treat her, which is why it took so long for anyone to find out). When she was in kindergarten, (she was in the same class as my younger brother and he remarked about how the teacher let her sit in a beanbag chair becuase the regular desks were uncomfortable for her) someone decided to call the hospital where we were told she was being treated to set up a suprise for Riley while she was staying there. The hospital staff told this person that they didnt have any cancer patients under that name and thats when the police got involved. They found out that everything had been faked and her mom had been giving her medicine that made her extremely sick and that other than that Riley was completely healthy. It was a huge deal and I remember talking to people about it on the playground and people spreading crazy rumors about Riley and her family. Her mother was convicted and served jail time and last time I saw RIley before I moved, she was very happy and healthy and her hair had grown out into a cute pixie cut. I didn't realize how often this kind of thing could happen until I watched this video, and a lot of the stuff makes a lot more sense now. So I just thought I'd share the story of RIley as a personal experience of mbp

[miledith]

The Sally Clark case is really sad. An innocent woman who lost 2 sons, was wrongly convicted for their death and put in prison for 3 years. And then she was never able to recover mentally and drank herself to death… That is so tragic and heartbreaking.