A true and tragic story of The Kowalskis was documented in the Netflix documentary Take Care of Maya. Maya Kowalski was diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome (CPRS) when she was a child, and what ensued became a long battle between the family and Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital. Years later, many people are asking: where is Maya Kowalski now?
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Maya’s mother, Beata Kowalski, who is also a nurse, researched her daughter’s symptoms after she was screaming constantly from the pain. In 2015, Maya was taken to the hospital after experiencing excruciating pain from CPRS. As a result of the pain, her feet turned inward, she developed lesions, and her legs could no longer support her body.
The doctors described her mother Beata to be “pushy” when she asked to prescribe her daughter more doses of ketamine, which often helped her with the pain before she was admitted to All Children’s. “Maya relapsed; it came back, and it was very severe,” father Jack Kowalski says in the Netflix documentary. “She started complaining of pain in her tummy, and it got to the point where she was screaming and crying and begging for help.”
Because of the ketamine treatment, the medical director of the hospital’s child protection team Dr. Sally Smith conducted an investigation to see whether the family was abusing Maya. She accused her mother of child abuse and alleged that Beata had a Munchausen-by-proxy diagnosis. The hospital barred Maya’s family from visiting her at the hospital for 90 days. Many legal battles were pursued by the Kowalskis as Maya was kept away from her family. She was finally returned to her family after her mom died by suicide.
“I’m sorry,” Beata wrote in an email discovered after her death, “but I no longer can take the pain of being away from Maya and being treated like a criminal. I cannot watch my daughter suffer in pain and keep getting worse.”
So where is Maya Kowalski now? Read more below to find out.
Where is Maya Kowalski now?
Where is Maya Kowalski now? As of writing this article, Maya Kowalski is 17 years old and takes part in Duke University’s Talent Identification Program for gifted children. She still has CPRS but the courts ordered her family to not undergo ketamine treatment anymore. A year after she left the hospital, she took her first steps unassisted. She told The Cut, “I still have pain, but it’s not as severe as it once was and I’m forever grateful for that.”
On her mother’s legacy and what she remembers of her, Maya told People, “I remember small things but not full stories. She was always the type of person to try and make me feel better….she went the extra mile to make people smile.” She later said, “One day I was in the ICU, and my mom kissed me on the forehead and was like, ‘I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ I never saw her again. I was medically kidnapped. I tried being hopeful, but there was a point where I thought, ‘I’m never getting out of this place.” She continued, “For us as a family to move on, we need to fulfill my mom’s wish and fight. I want justice for my mom.”
“Psychologically, it destroyed all of us,” Jack Kowalski, Maya’s father told The Cut. “When somebody knocks on our door, now you don’t want to answer it because you’re worried it’s somebody from Children and Families. You don’t want your child to play sports because if they get hurt, where am I going to take them?”
On June 24, 2023, DailyMail reported that Maya Kowalski’s family is pursuing a lawsuit against Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital seeking $55 million in compensatory and $165 million in punitive damages. The court date is set for September 2023.
“I watched the Kowalskis disintegrate and then try to move on without the linchpin — the wife and mother,” Greg Anderson, the Kowalski’s attorney told People. “Beata was a force of nature in taking care of her family. The depth of loss is beyond words.” Anderson has been their attorney for the past seven years and considers himself an extension of the family. Living with the heavy weight of pending litigation and hope for the upcoming trial has affected Anderson and his own family. “[My three kids] have literally not known what life is like without the Kowalski case,” he says.
Sally Smith talked to The Cut about her decision to keep Maya from her family. She, along with her former employer Suncoast settled a lawsuit with the Kowalskis for $2.5 million. “I am not a horrible person whose goal in life is to disrupt families,” Sally Smith said. “I have spent my adult life attempting to serve children in my community to ameliorate conditions of abuse and neglect. I wish our society did more to help struggling families to provide safe, nurturing homes to their children. I’m not a big proponent of punitive approaches for such families contrary to media portrayals about me.” And she said, about her subspecialty, “I wish that people who seek to vilify child abuse pediatricians would somehow find the critical knowledge, tools and framework to better understand and represent the tremendous challenges these children and their families and caretakers present for our society and for physicians.“
If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, help is available. Call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 for free and confidential counseling.
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