COMPLICATED
COMPLICATED
CHILDREN Suffering at the Margins of Medicine
Kids with complex and uncommon diseases whose care is too complicated for mainstream medicine are getting tossed around from specialist to specialist, abandoned, and accused of psychological disorders. They often live with chronic pain and other disabling symptoms, but are unable to get the help they need because they are considered too medically complex, legally risky, or worse, because their parents are accused of over-medicalizing or abusing them.
Filmed over seven years, COMPLICATED focuses on young people with one of the most prevalent of these conditions, a connective-tissue disease called Ehler’s-Danlos syndrome (EDS). In the film we learn that Elvis had it, which explains his wild dance moves and pain pill addiction. A Miss America had it, but you’d never know. It’s a variable condition with symptoms that can be mild or deadly, but what differentiates EDS and other complicated illnesses is their invisibility—a lack of research, awareness and accurate diagnostics—which too often leads to medical gaslighting and denial of treatment or insurance coverage.
In a time when the failures of healthcare in America are coming under scrutiny, COMPLICATED takes the viewer into the hidden world of brave young people trying to survive with a complex illness, mothers risking loss of custody to help them, and medical and child protective systems failing them at every turn. But through advocating for themselves and researching their own disease genetics, a glimmer of hope appears on the horizon.
(85. min)
“There’s nobody that understands our conditions, because they’re so rare and they’re so complicated. I wouldn’t be on hospice right now if it weren’t for a lot of things going on in my medical care due to not being listened to and not being believed.”