Dee Dee claimed Gypsy had leukemia when she was young and that she’d had health problems since she was a baby. Dee Dee’s list of her daughter’s diagnoses seemed endless and included epilepsy, sleep apnea, eye issues, muscular dystrophy and chromosomal defects, according to BuzzFeed. Such claims dogged Gypsy’s real life, too.
Gypsy’s sickly appearance also goes a long way in stopping any intrusive questions from curious onlookers.
In the show, Arquette’s Dee Dee seems able to convince people of Gypsy’s many illnesses just by speaking with an authoritative tone to strangers and doctors. In The Act, Gypsy is bald, gets around in a wheelchair, eats through a feeding tube, has a severe sugar allergy, has had her salivary glands removed and suffers from epilepsy, paraplegia, a heart murmur and anemia, among other issues. How did Dee Dee fabricate Gypsy’s illnesses?
