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Munchausen by Internet


Sudo
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I saw this article and immediately thought about Catmandu. But as I was reading it, most cases aren't that extreme. People can fake illness or anything else that draws sympathy to them. I think we may have a little of that here at the Greasespot. People who always seem to have some kind of crisis going on. Then they have a way of making people on the forums pick sides as to what they believe. Very interesting.

Read the article http://www.healthyplace.com/site/article_faking.asp'>HERE!

sudo
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I saw this article and immediately thought about Catmandu. But as I was reading it, most cases aren't that extreme. People can fake illness or anything else that draws sympathy to them. I think we may have a little of that here at the Greasespot. People who always seem to have some kind of crisis going on. Then they have a way of making people on the forums pick sides as to what they believe. Very interesting.

Read the article <a href=http://www.healthyplace.com/site/article_faking.asp><B><font color=red>HERE!</font></B>

<center>sudo</center>

Gee... ya think?! :rolleyes:

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People can fake illness or anything else that draws sympathy to them. ....

<center>sudo</center>

Sudo,

I wonder if you are familiar with the "Naked Tomato Debacle" that was making the medical blog rounds last year? A young woman with some serious problems set up a blog upon which she portrayed herself as a pediatric resident. Her blogs were very in-depth and fooled many practicing "fleas" who linked her and with whom she built a nice on-line support system. Eventually, illness and other increasingly dramatic situations occurred...finally, however, she was exposed and the blog was taken down. Many of the real doctors she fooled refused to believe they'd been deceived at first. However, to their credit, the vast majority of those same doctors sent her well-wishes and hopes for a recovery and a real life of her own.

The article reminded me of that.

I never knew catmandu as catmandu, though I was warned when he returned in another guise...

An interesting article, indeed, and should give us all pause for thought.

Respectfully,

~QT

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QT,

Re:"I wonder if you are familiar with the "Naked Tomato Debacle" that was making the medical blog rounds last year?"

Nope. Not familiar with the case. The Internet provides a lot of anonymity for people who suck up the undeserved sympathy of fellow posters, though. And I thought folks would recognize the symptoms in the article as events that occur here very regularly.

sudo
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It's sad that people resort to that kind of behaviour. I guess they think they can get away with it because no one will ever know. But sooner or later it will catch up as the lies continue to mount. You're going to slip up somewhere...Just don't understand the mentality in that.

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At the risk of being booed by country western lovers..

Doesn't it sound like some old CW, "my wife left with my huntin dog, but not before the dog bit me, my truck broke down, life's just awwwwwfull"

Maybe some of those guys have a future, if they can put some song to those lyrics..

:biglaugh:

Edited by Mr. Hammeroni
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  • 2 weeks later...

""People can fake illness or anything else that draws sympathy to them. I think we may have a little of that here at the Greasespot. People who always seem to have some kind of crisis going on.""

""The Internet provides a lot of anonymity for people who suck up the undeserved sympathy of fellow posters, though. And I thought folks would recognize the symptoms in the article as events that occur here very regularly. ""

I just wanted to bring this to the top, I found it to be very interesting, and in light of what Sudo said in the above quotations, very true!

Cowgirl

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Cowgirl,

Re:"I just wanted to bring this to the top, I found it to be very interesting, and in light of what Sudo said in the above quotations, very true!"

I'm glad you brought it up again but it didn't seem to garner much interest the first time. I had thought that on a forum that centers on the victim hood of its posters, this would be an issue folks would be interested in discussing. LOTS of victims on this forum. Click HERE! for the original article.

sudo
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Cowgirl,

Re:<B><I><font color=maroon>"I just wanted to bring this to the top, I found it to be very interesting, and in light of what Sudo said in the above quotations, very true!"</font></I></B>

I'm glad you brought it up again but it didn't seem to garner much interest the first time. I had thought that on a forum that centers on the victim hood of its posters, this would be an issue folks would be interested in discussing. LOTS of victims on this forum. Click <http://www.healthyplace.com/site/article_faking.asp><B><font color=red>HERE!</font></B></a> for the original article.

<center>sudo</center>

I find it an interesting topic to read but have little to contribute in the way of posting experiences.

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I'm glad you brought it up again but it didn't seem to garner much interest the first time. I had thought that on a forum that centers on the victim hood of its posters, this would be an issue folks would be interested in discussing. LOTS of victims on this forum. Click <http://www.healthyplace.com/site/article_faking.asp> sudo

I missed this thread on it's first go round. I went thru something similar to this recently on another forum I post on. As I read a thread there was a woman posting there who claimed to be a nurse. One of the diseases she brought up was Crohn's Disease, which most of you know I have. She spelled it 'chrons' though, no capital C, no apostrophe between the n and s, the h in the wrong place and no Disease after the first use of chrons <sic> to distinguish she was talking about one of the IBD's and not IBS, which are commonly confused by people who are new to learning about it all.

Now normally a word spelled wrong I wouldn't question so strongly and figure it was a typo, but she spelled it this way 3 times in one paragraph! I brought it to her attention and asked her what type of nurse she was that she didn't know how to correctly spell the name. I also mentioned how the majority write it as Crohn's Disease the first usage in a post and then shorten it to Crohn's after, if they are posting to pass on information to others about the disease.

She never posted again. I guess that pretty well answered my questions, since she had done many posts until I came along and intro'd myself as the resident Crohnie to her. I had also corrected a couple of things she said that were wrong, so I left that thread feeling good that she was stopped before she made someone a victim of her wrong infomation. :)

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whenever i hear that Munchausen word, i think of women who make their babies sick to get attention and it's truly truly horrible

i read yesterday something about the first suicide on the internet.... caught on the webcam's of the chatters

how horribly sad beyond words

i don't know

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Geez, Sudo, I hope you are not lumping those of us who have posted about health issues as among those who "suck up the undeserved sympathy" here at Greasespot.

And is it a bad thing to say, "Hey, my life is sucky" when it is? I left that only-speak-positives doctrine a long time ago. I guess I'm just sayin' that I haven't noticed anyone particularly hogging the spotlight. I've had enough drama in my life to write a soap opera script for a year; I don't talk about it much, but that's just me.

That said, I did encounter a Catmandu-type incident a couple of years ago. A gal who led a Yahoo! support group suddenly announced she was going back to an abusive spouse, then we next heard from her "daughter" that she'd died. It took a little ferreting, since we didn't know her real name, but we determined that there had been no obit in her home town. I eventually found her, posting under another name.

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Sounds like the leadership of TWI past and present from the corpse all the way up to the top Nazi and how they used to sensationalize everything for sympathy. They could turn an ingrown toenail into a non curable virus ravaging their immune system.

They could turn a flat tire on their way to a meeting into a direct attempt of the devil to kill them because of their commitment to move the Word. Did I miss anything? :biglaugh::confused::evildenk: :evildenk:

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  • 2 weeks later...

This is my specialty, so to speak, folks who report symptoms that are greatly in excess of what can be observed objectively and/or demonstrated in diagnostic tests. There are a number of motivations, ranging from conscious and deliberate with concrete objectives to entirely subconscious. Some of these folks are simply attempting to get a disbability check, or in my workplace, are seeking to get out of the harsh corrections environment into the kinder and gentler psych hospital. Some are catastrophizing a legitimate but fairly benign illness or symptom (like headaches) due to anxiety. Some are experiencing a legitimate but relatively rare mental disorder called a conversion disorder whereby psychiatric distress is converted into a bonafide disability like blindness or paralysis. Some have somatization disorder, requiring at least 8 medically unexplained symptoms. Some function at a high level despite this problem, others are totally disabled. Some have factitious disorder, a condition where there is an unconscious motivation to play the pateient role. Some have a personality disorder whereby they like to create histrionic chaos and thrive on drama. This area of medicine is probably the most fascinating of all, to tease out the person's motivations and true level of functioning. When I was a new nurse, I worked with young Vietnamese people and I had a young man who came into the clinic saying via the translator that he had been vomiting 5x a day for a month. The doctor recommended weighing him and he had gained 15 lbs. He was told to bring in a sample of the vomit so we could analyze it to determine appropriate treatment(not a real diagnostic test). I never saw him again. I do believe he was in some form of distress but he was not wasting away from a gastrointestinal illness.

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  • 4 weeks later...

:redface:

Ya HAD to post another "Florida Nutcase" story, didn't you? Just when we were managing to distract the world from how stupid some folks in Florida are...... :wacko:

Thanks, Shellon! Thanks a lot!

:biglaugh:

Edited by Belle
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Actually I'm glad she posted it! :) I am by myself a lot at work and we do get traffic in here in the summer time, soliciters, lost stragglers, and it's good to be warned and reminded about this stuff happening from time to time. Con Artists catch people off guard, that's partly how they are successful. So it's always good to bring these stories up from time to time no matter how savey (sp?) we think we are to this stuff.

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:redface:

Ya HAD to post another "Florida Nutcase" story, didn't you? Just when we were managing to distract the world from how stupid some folks in Florida are...... :wacko:

Thanks, Shellon! Thanks a lot!

:biglaugh:

I think it's the heat. :rolleyes:

People are stupid all over. Here we had a goofball run through a grocery story buttass naked, three store employees chasing him. News report said he "giggled in a shrill voice" seemingly enjoying his sunday morning romp through the veggies.

Oh yeah, and I mentioned the florida nut for other reasons too, but I can't specify.

Ok, I'm done, thank you very much.

Exit stage left following proper curtsy

:confused:

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