Beata Kowalski, Maya Kowalski and Jack Kowalski in Take Care of Maya (Netflix)
When a Florida family decided to take their nine-year-old daughter to a hospital emergency room, they never thought that day would be the beginning of their worst nightmare. They went in search of help for Maya’s severe stomach pain in 2016, but ended up in a desperate situation that would destroy them forever. That’s the torture that counts Take care of Mayaa documentary that captivates users Netflix with a true story that can move and break our souls.
A story in which the parents – Beata and Jack – not only lost custody, but doctors and social workers accused the mother of deliberately making her ill and the girl of faking her illness, causing mother and daughter to spend months until the final Separation separated the family unit with Beata’s suicide. But for those stuck in the pervasive sadness that the Kowalski family version evokes, you should know what has happened to Maya since then. Because the girl who has suffered irreparable losses carries on with a hopeful attitude.
Maya Kowalski in Take Care of Maya (Netflix)
Take care of Maya reports on the case of a family who had already suffered enough when they had to take Maya to the hospital. A year ago, he began suffering from migraines, physical pain, and injuries due to his feet turning inward. She went to many doctors without being able to find the cause of the problem until a specialist diagnosed her with a condition known as CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome). According to the Mayo Clinic, it’s “a form of chronic pain that usually affects the arm or leg” and that “typically occurs after an injury, surgery, stroke, or heart attack.”
dr Kirkpatrick explains in the documentary, the same who diagnosed Maya, that the pain increases with time and he was convinced that Maya had an advanced case that required intensive treatment: it was through a practice that was only carried out comatose with ketamine in Mexico. The family took the risk. They were willing to do anything to remove the pain in Maya’s life. And it worked. With doses of ketamine and occupational therapy, the girl was able to walk again. Until he suffered a relapse with severe stomach pains in October 2016.
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They took her to Johns Hopkins All Children Hospital in the Tampa area, where doctors were suspicious of Beata’s demands and the high dose of ketamine they prescribed for the little girl. The suspicions led to questions, the questions to discussion, and the discussion to a report accusing the mother of having “Munchausen syndrome by proxy” or being “willfully forced upon another” (as reflected in The Sixth Sense, The Act of It). . No matter how much insistence Beata, her attorneys, or the doctor who diagnosed Maya and prescribed the treatment, the hospital’s child welfare officials stood by their decision. Maya was taken into state custody and never hugged her mother again. Far fewer see it.
Maya’s experience obviously shaped her forever. As a 16-year-old, he explains in the documentary how the nurses or doctors didn’t believe that he could only speak to Beata on the phone once a week and under the supervision of a social worker. She tells of the sad experience of a forced separation against her will and at the same time reveals the immense pain she still feels because of her mother’s absence: Because Beata committed suicide a month after a judge refused her to hug her daughter.
Maya Kowalski, Beata Kowalski, Jack Kowalski and Dr. Anthony Kirkpatrick in Take Care of Maya (Netflix)
And while the documentary obviously sides with the Kowalskis, casting a gloomy light on the doctors and judges involved without delving deeply into their professional motivations, it’s inevitable to fail to understand Maya’s story. From her experience when she was barely 10 years old, alone in the hospital and persevering with her physical pain. She lived in such a vulnerable situation at a young age while being separated from her family by a group of strangers.
But as I told them Maya continues to look to the future, despite the heavy backpack she will forever carry when looking into the past.
She is not very active on social networks, but on her Instagram profile we can see that she accompanied the documentary at its premiere at the Tribecca Festival with her partner, including a sentence that reads “You take care of me” . As a direct response of his presence to the title of the documentary.
Again, as The Cut explained in its report on the case, Maya is a “mature” and “academically ambitious” 16-year-old enrolled in a program for gifted children at Duke University. in North Carolina.
He also gets his pain under control through an intensive training program. “I still have pain, but it’s not as bad as it was before,” he explained to the outlet. “And I’m always grateful for that.” And it so happens that this girl, who was in so much pain that she could neither walk nor take a shower without feeling the slightest pain from the drops of water that touched her skin, is now competing participates in figure skating. Last March he took part in his first tournament in five years: he took first place.
In short, despite the pain of the past, the loss of her mother during an extreme nightmare, and the legal battle (a hearing date for the Kowalskis to seek punitive damages was set in September 2023), Maya Kowalski has carried on as… a symbol of perseverance despite the unexpected blows that life dealt him.
This article was written exclusively for Yahoo en Español by Cine54.
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