A teenage girl with a chronic pain condition testified Monday morning in a $220 million lawsuit against the hospital that she and her family claim medically kidnapped and abused her – to the point that her nearly three-months-long absence drove her mother to suicide.
In January 2017, Beata Kowalski, 43, killed herself after Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, initiated a legal process that eventually led to the mother being kept her away from her daughter, then-10-year-old Maya Kowalski, for over 87 days.
Maya, who is now 17, took the stand in a Venice courtroom and began her testimony by describing a happier life full of independence and determination. She told the jury that she was the impetus for all of her extracurricular activities like piano, ballet, and gymnastics. Maya was adamant about becoming a gymnast, she said, when a group of girls told her that she was too small to compete. Her attorney asked if that was how she generally reacted when someone told her she couldn’t do something. She answered in the affirmative.
“Oh yeah, I’m gonna prove you wrong,” Maya said.
After moving from the Chicago suburbs to Florida, she quickly adjusted, she said. Maya said she was excited to have a swimming pool. She enjoyed the sunshine. She described herself as generally healthy and resilient – saying she once broke her arm riding her bike but that she didn’t complain about the pain or even cry until three days later. Only then, Maya said, the tears came because she realized she wouldn’t be able to “do any of the activities that [she] enjoyed.”
In 2015, when she was 9 years old, she briefly suffered from a sprained ankle but said she was able to ride a bike by the 4th of July. Jurors were shown a picture of her doing exactly that – happy and smiling – next to her younger brother, Kyle.
Then things took a turn for the worse.
“I had a severe asthma attack and it was one of the worst asthma attacks I ever had,” Maya testified.
She said she went to an ER and then to Johns Hopkins for a few days. Maya recalled that she was able to walk into the hospital but was “having extreme complications” by the time she left, so she needed to leave in a wheelchair. Gradually, she realized she had pain in her right leg and that over time the pain spread to her left leg. She went home on July 7, 2015, and returned to Johns Hopkins a few times before she was eventually transferred to a hospital in Illinois.
Jurors were shown a picture of Maya covered in blankets and two stuffed monkeys – in a hospital bed-like stretcher off of a plane. Her dad’s old firefighter friends helped transport her.
“It had increased,” she said of her pain.”There was new places at this point. It was at my midsection … it had transferred to my arm at some point. I had constipation issues and we later found out it responded to my diagnosis of CRPS.”
And, worse yet, the pain was still a mystery. She went from hospital to hospital but the results were often the same. She was put on an intensive regimen of physical therapy starting in Chicago and then continued in Florida. But that did nothing to help, she said.
“None of the doctors knew what was wrong with me at the time so they just assumed that strengthening my muscles would get me to walking again,” she said – describing a photo of her in a physical therapy device meant to strengthen arm muscles at Tampa General where she stayed for a month and where her parents often visited.
“It was very challenging,” she said of her physical therapy. “It was excruciating.”
The uncertainty also took an emotional toll.
“My parents were extremely worried and that, in turn, made me more anxious,” Maya testified. “Because, as a kid, you look up to your parents.”
Formerly a skilled gymnast, Maya came to live exclusively in a wheelchair. She developed mysterious lesions that initially started as open sores that hurt and when touched the pain was amplified. Later, she learned those lesions were indicative of complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). For those with CRPS, the body misinterprets even light touches as excruciating pain, resulting in symptoms such as stiffness, spasms, and limited mobility.
The diagnosis, Maya testified, was supplied by specialist, anesthesiologist, and pharmacologist Dr. Anthony Kirkpatrick, who was in private practice with a focus on CRPS.
Kirkpatrick would go on to initiate the ketamine therapy that Maya and her family relied on to deal with the young girl’s chronic condition.
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Ketamine is a clinically accepted form of treatment that blocks pain receptors and allows the patient’s body to revise the sensitization process, the medical malpractice complaint explains.
After an acute flareup in October 2016, Maya’s father took her to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital. Maya testified that her father took her to the hospital because the pain was acute and she had extreme stomach issues as well – essentially because they thought she needed immediate help in an emergency room.
There, her parents tried to explain she needed her specialist-prescribed course of treatment. For naught.
The lawsuit, filed by Maya’s father and Beata’s widower, Jack Kowalski, alleges that the hospital dismissed the family’s instructions. The complaint also alleges the hospital ignored expertise from Maya’s specialists on how to treat her – and that hospital staff lacked clinical or academic experience with CRPS.
According to the complaint, Johns Hopkins staff became “offended and defensive” by the parents’ suggestions on how to treat their daughter. In particular, staff were shocked at the requests – adamantly made by her mother – to give Maya ketamine.
In time, the parents’ instructions led the hospital to allege child abuse and initiate a custody battle that took Maya away from her parents for several months. The results were disastrous. Six days after Maya’s mother killed herself, she was reunited with her father.
The lawsuit is the subject of a popular Netflix documentary, “Take Care of Maya.” The film also cites support for Maya’s ketamine treatment – arguing that medical staff at Johns Hopkins pushed forward with a child abuse case against Beata Kowalski despite being told by her specialist that Maya would benefit from ketamine.
The situation allegedly escalated to a hospital social worker reporting Beata Kowalski to the Florida Department of Children and Families, the complaint explains. When the DCF investigator quickly took Beata’s side, hospital staff refused to let Maya go even though the parents wanted her transferred, the complaint says. Staff then allegedly reached out again to DCF and made false allegations about the girl’s mother, the complaint alleges. A judge eventually ordered Maya to be sheltered at the hospital while a child abuse investigation was conducted.
“Our priority at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital is always the safety and privacy of our patients and their families, and we are vigorously defending against the false allegations made in the suit,” a hospital spokesperson told Law&Crime in a statement. “Our first responsibility is always to the child brought to us for care, and we stand behind our staff’s compassionate care.”
The hospital also claims they were obligated to start the legal process that kept Maya away from her family.
“Our staff are required by law to notify Florida’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) if they suspect abuse or neglect,” the hospital’s spokesperson added. “It is DCF and a judge – not Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital – that investigates the situation and makes the ultimate decision about what course of action is in the best interest of the child.”
During Maya’s testimony, an attorney for the defendant hospital raised a hearsay issue as to how Maya described the way she and her family came to trust Kirkpatrick’s opinion. The objection didn’t matter much – she said that someone told her Kirkpatrick had treated someone else with CRPS symptoms.
Most notably, Maya noted that her CRPS had resulted in an “extremely severe” case of dystonia – where her foot muscles contracted uncontrollably to the point her toes pointed in. One doctor, whose advice she ultimately declined, suggested breaking Maya’s feet and then performing corrective surgery.
Maya said her other symptoms included temperature changes in her limbs that happened at random times and were not influenced by external temperatures. She testified that she began to randomly sweat – not dependent on the external environment. She had tinnitus. Her eyesight deteriorated later on to the point that she became sensitive to light and had to wear sunglasses.
“Symptoms can change on a day-to-day basis,” Maya told jurors – explaining that she had to constantly have others change her blankets, change her clothes, and change the thermostat. “It was annoying…you know you can’t do it for yourself so you just feel like an inconvenience.”
That was particularly hard for her to accept, she said, because she was very independent and her mom always wanted her to be that way.
Asked to describe the excruciating pain her CRPS caused, the witness used a vivid metaphor of flame.
“It’s like I was born with gasoline deep within my body and some incident – whether it was that sprained ankle or the severe asthma attack – was like a match and acted like a catalyst that just set my body on fire and I have to live with this burning pain.”
Alberto Luperon contributed to this report.
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