A woman whose childhood medical condition and hospital treatment were featured in the tragic Netflix documentary “Take Care of Maya” is finally getting her day in court.
Maya Kowalski was just nine years old when she started having asthma attacks and headaches. Her symptoms soon evolved to include lesions on her arms and legs, and cramping in her feet, which began to curl so she couldn’t walk without assistance. Her parents, Jack and Beata, took her to a doctor to find out what was wrong with their daughter, with at least one thinking the girl’s condition was all in her head.
“But Maya would be crying 24/7,” Jack, 61, told People Magazine in June. “We knew she wasn’t faking.”
Finally, the Kowalskis found Dr. Anthony Kirkpatrick, who evaluated Maya and diagnosed her with a rare disorder known as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, an impairment of the nervous system that increases pain sensations – meaning even the slightest stimulus could cause severe pain to Maya. Kirkpatrick treated Maya and found that the only thing that worked for her condition was monthly infusions of the powerful anesthetic ketamine, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported back in 2019.
There are critics of the diagnosis and treatment since doctors don’t know what causes CRPS or exactly how to treat it, but the ketamine injections allowed Maya to return to life as an ordinary young girl.
But Maya would still have relapses, and in October 2016, her parents took her to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, when she was having a stomachache so severe she was stuck in the fetal position.
Seven months earlier, the same hospital seemingly accepted Maya’s diagnosis, implanting a port so the young girl could easily receive intravenous treatments for the condition. But in October 2016, doctors at the hospital started doubting Maya’s diagnosis and believing that her mother was suffering from Munchausen by proxy, a condition in which a parent seeks attention from doctors and medical personnel by faking a child’s illness.
The hospital filed an abuse report, but child welfare officials closed it that same day after speaking with Maya’s specialist, according to court documents reviewed by the Herald-Tribune.
But hospital staff wouldn’t let it go, and called in Dr. Sally Smith, a pediatrician and part-time medical director of the Pinellas County Child Protection Team. The hospital filed a second abuse claim with more details, alleging that Maya’s mother Beata wanted to put her daughter in a coma and became angry when Maya asked for food. The abuse report also stated that Maya wasn’t really in pain.
An attorney for Maya’s family, Jennifer Anderson, told the Herald-Tribune in 2019 that Beata was “an advocate for her daughter.”
“And my sense is it struck these ER doctors that we know better than this pushy mom who’s coming in here telling us how to do our job,” Anderson added.
Beata, a registered nurse who escaped communist-era Poland, eventually committed suicide, believing that doing so would lead the hospital to let Maya go home and take her condition seriously. Sadly, she was right.
Just days after Beata took her own life, the hospital dropped its case against the Kowalskis and let Maya leave the hospital – after keeping her for three months under a court-ordered separation that only allowed Beata to speak to Maya on the phone with someone listening in. Their devastating phone calls can be heard in the Netflix documentary.
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The Kowalskis sued the hospital and Dr. Smith, alleging the medical center’s negligence led to Beata’s death, NBC News reported.
“I was medically kidnapped,” Maya, now 17, told People Magazine earlier this year.
“Maya Kowalski was falsely imprisoned and battered. She was denied communication with her family,” defense attorney Anderson told jurors now that the trial for the lawsuit is finally underway. “She was denied communication with the outside. She was told that her mother was crazy. She was told by social workers, one in particular, that she would be her mother.”
Jack Kowalski told the Herald-Tribune in 2019 that he believed his lawsuit would show that Smith and the hospital knew they were making a false child abuse report but refused to drop it even though evidence showed they were wrong. He said Maya’s health deteriorated rapidly under their care and refusal to treat her as she had been in the past.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.