Gypsy Rose Details Her Most Painful Unnecessary Procedure (Exclusive)

The 32-year-old Munchausen by Proxy victim recalls not responding well to anesthesia after an unnecessary procedure

Gypsy Rose Blanchard — the 32-year-old Munchausen by proxy victim who was released from a Missouri prison early Thursday morning — remembers which of her unwarranted surgeries was the most excruciating.

In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, the newly freed woman said that it was a surgery "to remove two salivary glands behind my neck.” She recalls that she “didn't respond very well to the anesthesia,” making the recovery process “really, really hard."

The Louisiana native served eight years behind bars for her role in the 2015 murder of her mother Dee Dee Blanchard. For much of Gypsy’s formative years, she was falsely made to believe she had various illnesses, which resulted in her unnecessarily undergoing the salivary glands surgery.

Related: Gypsy Rose Blanchard Wants Kids After Release, But Fears 'Hard Conversation' About Mom's Murder (Exclusive)

“To this day, it has left me with the side effects of having to clear my throat all the time. So I'm always, if you hear me, that is a constant thing that I've had ever since. And it annoys people to no end,” Gypsy says, adding that it isn’t her intention to bother anyone.

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“It's because my saliva is very thick and so I'm always having to clear my throat. So it's been a negative side effect for me. And the reason why I had that surgery is because my mother had put [Orajel] on my gums to make me drool at the appointment and complain to the doctor that [I drool] too much.”

Gypsy said when she wasn’t near doctors, she would ask her mother if the procedures were necessary.

“She would get really, really upset with me and start manipulating me in a way that she would take her love from me," she says.

Gypsy, her husband and her family, will be featured in Lifetime's gripping new docuseries The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, premiering Jan. 5.

"As a survivor of relentless child abuse, this docuseries chronicles my quest for liberation and journey through self-discovery,” Gypsy says in the trailer. “I am unapologetically myself and unafraid to expose the hidden parts of my life that have never been revealed until now.”

In Thursday’s exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Gypsy described her teen years as a “roller coaster,” where at times, she would have moments of “rebelling and then have moments of being very submissive.”

“So in the submissive moment, things would be really good, and we would do things together that we would find fun. We'd watch a movie at night, we would go to the zoo together. We would just do little things around town together that was fun and bonding moments. And then I'd be a little bit more rebellious and question the sicknesses, and then that would be really, really toxic,” Gypsy says, comparing their mother-daughter relationship to domestic violence. 

“I tried my best to be respectful, but sometimes it was very hard, so I would raise my voice, too. But she would call me things like b----, w----, s---, devil spawn. So all these terms really, really took an emotional and a mental toll on me.”

Today, Gypsy is married and excited to continue her life with her new husband, Ryan Scott Anderson, in Louisiana.

"I'm ready for freedom," Gypsy tells PEOPLE.

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.

The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, a six-hour special offering unprecedented access to the most popular victim of Munchausen by Proxy, premieres Jan. 5 on Lifetime at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

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