When she was just nine years old, Maya Kowalski began suffering from headaches, asthma attacks, painful lesions on her arms and legs and severe cramping in her feet.

A year later in 2016, she was admitted to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in Florida with crippling stomach pain, which her father Jack recalls was “so severe, her knees were going up to her chest, and she was screaming”. 

Now aged 16, Maya’s symptoms were later discovered to be linked to the rare neurological condition Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, known as CRPS – but not before tragedy struck for the Kowalski family. 

Who was Beata Kowalski?

After Maya was hospitalised, doctors suspected that her mother Beata Kowalski had the psychological condition Munchausen syndrome by proxy – where the caregiver or parent will make up fake symptoms or cause real ones to make it look like the child is unwell.

While at the hospital, Beata – who was a nurse – instructed doctors to give her daughter a high dose of ketamine in order to reset her nervous system and treat her CRPS, as the treatment had previously worked at a practice in Mexico (as reported by The Cut). 

But hospital staff grew suspicious and contacted child protective services, who removed Maya from the custody of her parents for three months until the court ordered a full psychological evaluation for Beata and had cleared her of any mental illness. 

Tragically, Beata died by suicide 87 days after she had been separated from her daughter, and was found with a note which read: “I no longer can take the pain being away from Maya and being treated like a criminal. I cannot watch my daughter suffer in pain and keep getting worse.”