Community Munchausen's by Internet (Malingerers, Munchies, Spoonies, etc) - Feigning Illnesses for Attention

[InternetDramaFillsTheVoid]

Comes in 200mg for once daily use too. But since there's a non-null risk of SJS they taper slooooowly.

But, but, but if they manage to induce SJS, then they’ll finally have a VERY visible/noticeable, true-and-honest reason to beg for assists online!! Which munchie WOULDN’T want that?!

Amongst people with epilepsy it's generally well tolerated, so it's a first line treatment though SJS/DRESS (skin falls off reactions) is a serious concern if you fuck with your dosages, and they sew your eyes shut to save your sight there, so... FAFO, I guess.

If you’re lucky, you get those insane-looking KPro lenses, which have a little tube poking up through the stitched-shut eyelids, so they can administer eyedrops to the eyes without having to cut open the eyelids. Makes you look like a Temu version of Batou from Ghost In The Shell.

Spoiler: How do I know this?

Had SJS from a reaction to fluconazole. Looked like an extra from The Walking Dead.

 

[Commander Suzdal]

The user who talked about having factitious disorder, getting treatment for it, and recovering was @BringBackForensicFiles back in 2019. I don't think any of this was verified by a mod, but it does all sound plausible. @Otterly - you replied to her a bit during this conversation, but might find it interesting to revisit.

Some highlights about treatment:

One stay at Children’s when I was around 14 or 15 the doctor talked to my parents separately and said they thought my issues were psychosomatic. They supported me getting a psychiatrist and I was put on anti-anxiety meds, which did help the true anxiety I had. Munchausens wasn’t really well known or talked about back then, so I just went along with it until I left for college. That’s when it really blew up.

1. I was caught and confronted during a hospitalization regarding my kidneys that some tests came back that they specifically ran to see if I was doing this to myself and they came back indisputable that I was. They confronted me with the resident whom I trusted and the psychiatrist in a gentle, but firm manner. I was able to admit and felt much better for it. I was angry for awhile and tried to deny it, but they presented the evidence and helped walk me through to admitting it.

2. I did individual intensive DBT and CBT and for a few months I did outpatient IOP for patients with BPD. I also kept thought logs and urge logs for urges to go to the hospital. I also made a contract with my PCP and therapist about steps to take if I truly was feeling sick. Having steps and organization really helped me be able to know what to do if I was having urges and what to expect if I was truly sick.

I no longer have the urges to engage in any sort of attention seeking behaviors, though I do still get pangs of jealousy if a friend or family member is sick or hospitalized, but I’m honest with my therapist about my feelings.

Once everything came out, my parents said they had suspected but could never be sure. We’ve done family counseling and now, years later, we’re very close and I’m lucky to have them. They still understandably get iffy when I truly get sick, but part of my agreement with my doctors is that I allow them to have access to my online portal so they can see test results and what not for themselves.

 

[Otterly]

might find it interesting to revisit.

Thanks! I’ll go back and look at it. This bit is interesting;
also made a contract with my PCP and therapist about steps to take if I truly was feeling sick. Having steps and organization really helped me be able to know what to do if I was having urges and what to expect if I was truly sick.
I’d be very interested to see what kind of things those steps were.

 

[Lolzalolol2324]

Thank you for digging that up!

It strikes me that there are so many factors stacked against being able to treat Factitious Disorder. It seems like the sooner professionals can intervene the better, but at the same time, fear of litigation means they need to have very convincing proof that the patient is a munchie before they can step in. And, the longer the patient can munch, the more likely they are to actually fuck themselves up and develop real medical problems, which both make it even harder to prove without a doubt that they are a munchie and to reduce their access to medical attention. And, the longer they go undiagnosed, the longer they have to doctor shop their way to the right diagnoses, which also come with tools to make it easier to induce symptoms (i.e. a tube to purge through or a central line to mess with) in a way that is hard to prove. And then, even if they do manage to get FD diagnosed, the munchies have endless attention they can get via social media.

For example, I think about Dani, who does have a diagnosis. Because she is dumb and tells on herself, we know her local hospital effectively withholds attention as much as possible when she goes there. But, because she has delayed gastric emptying (probably from her munching/ED) and was able to doctor shop her way to that femoral port and home health, she still has access to induce symptoms and needs enough healthcare attention that she has no incentive to recover. Or I think about the ones like Cheyenne who clearly had doctors who knew they were munchies, but had induced serious enough problems that any new doctor would, at least initially, assume they could have some serious and rare underlying condition.

If the user you quoted was legit, then it sounds like they have only been able to recover because their doctors were able to effectively catch them before they had health issues that gave them regular access to healthcare attention. And, when they do need to go to the doctor/hospital, their team can have a clear plan in place to keep them relapsing into their FD.

 

[Spunt]

In the UK, the NHS will very readily accuse you of/diagnose you with Factitious Disorder, Munchausen's or Somatoform Disorder rather than treat you for genuine conditions. This is particularly the case in places with large junkie populations. My sister-in-law had cluster headaches, seizures and other weird neurological symptoms for all her adult life but when an epilepsy test came in negative her GP diagnosed her with Somatoform Disorder (which he wasn't qualified to do, that diagnosis requires a psych) in order to deny her painkillers, which he said to her face that she intended to sell on to the local pillheads.

It was only when she both moved and ended up in hospital with very obviously non-faked seizures that they bothered to put her in an MRI after an entire DECADE of telling her she was imagining things, and discovered the skull deformity that was driving a bone spur into her fucking brain and sent her for emergency surgery. But they refused to give her post-surgical painkillers ... because her fucking records still said Somatoform Disorder, something that took 5 years to eventually remove with the aid of a lawyer.

Suing the NHS for medical negligence has a pitiful success rate, and the NHS tries to force people down its complaints procedure, which both gains you nothing if you win and makes you waive your right to sue, something most people don't realise when they take the otherwise very reasonable-sounding step of making a complaint.

Medicine in the US is about making money, and making money involves not being sued for malpractice. Besides, selling Ketamine to munchies is good business. Whereas the NHS is about trying not to spend any money at all, and calling someone a munchie and denying them any treatment costs literally nothing. Also, old Indian doctors here are notorious misogynists and are renowned for their God complexes, and their first instinct is that any woman presenting to them who isn't literally on fire is probably just hysterical and needs 2 paracetamol and a fainting couch.

I think there's a cohort of these British "munchie" girls who are actually genuinely sick with one thing or another, but because the NHS refuses to treat them they go down the zebra route and get sucked into the faker community, as well as falling prey to dodgy private quacks, especially those abroad. They act kinda crazy, but when your doctor is trying to gaslight you into believing that your symptoms are all in your head as well as the ongoing effects of whatever untreated illness you actually have, it's easy to end up kinda kooky. But not Tilly. Tilly's the real deal.

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

So overall even if you know someone’s munching you’re still stuck treating the things they’re inducing, rather than the root cause? That makes me wonder about how common it actually is - it’s always labelled as a rare illness but there seem to be loads of them and if none if them are actually getting that diagnosis, it seems rarer.
Is there an element of the way they treat BPD, like they don’t slap you with that label as you’ll flounce, they just say cptsd and try to keep you in therapy?
They are really fascinating - I will check out the podcast when I have time

It's generally considered unethical to outright lie to a patient about diagnosis, and CPTSD is not in any official diagnostic list (yet). The patient's medical records are hers, legally, so it's also setting yourself up for an awkward moment if you fib in office but document something else in the record. That said, there are certain clinicians who are far less vigilant about this type of thing and will employ any method of plausible deniability they can think of to avoid squaring up and facing the facts with a fragile or difficult patient.

One way they are able to do this is that in the USA, many higher acuity programs- inpatient admissions, intensive outpatient- insurance will not reimburse outside a very narrow set of codes. Famously, most of them will not reimburse intensive treatment with PTSD as a top line diagnosis, for example. The usual trick is to top line everyone (other than schizophrenia and bipolar diagnoses) with major depressive disorder (not an egregious lie, since they are usually there for suicidality) and then put the actual presenting problem next line down. So you could, if you were an avoidant type of professional, truthfully tell your borderline patient that her reason for admission was depression.

 

[Otterly]

So you could, if you were an avoidant type of professional, truthfully tell your borderline patient that her reason for admission was depression.

That’s reasonable. what kind of rate of ‘acceptance’ is there with these diagnoses? I think people seem ok with being labelled with MDD (i guess we can blame/thank chemical imbalance propaganda for making it Not Your Fault) but there’s a lot of stigma over personality disorders in particular. How many patients accept it and how does that conversation go ?

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

That’s reasonable. what kind of rate of ‘acceptance’ is there with these diagnoses? I think people seem ok with being labelled with MDD (i guess we can blame/thank chemical imbalance propaganda for making it Not Your Fault) but there’s a lot of stigma over personality disorders in particular. How many patients accept it and how does that conversation go ?

I think it's easier to accept than it used to be for some, but the stigma is still heavy enough that a lot of others will struggle. I know the KF (and especially BP) view of borderlines is that they are evil harpy sluts from hell or something, but believe it or not, while this may be a fair enough descriptor for a lot of ones who become lolcows, it really doesn't accurately describe a lot of the clinical population. The basic, clinical definition of BPD is a human being who has developed maladaptive coping skills, many of which constitute a form of arrested development. And these human beings tend to really deeply hate themselves and be terribly afraid much of the time. One thing that stands out in memory is a gal who on learning the diagnosis, broke off her engagement and formally cut loose all her family and friends, with heartfelt apologies. She then tried, and failed, to kill herself. Her rationale was that she was doing objective harm to the world by continuing to interact with anyone at all, because of what "borderline" means in her understanding of it. She felt that the only ethical thing to do was to isolate completely or die. She had a ton of insight as to her disease, too. I admit when people get on a real roll with the "BPDemon" stuff I always have her face float up in my mind.

 

[Zemblan Physics]

That’s reasonable. what kind of rate of ‘acceptance’ is there with these diagnoses? I think people seem ok with being labelled with MDD (i guess we can blame/thank chemical imbalance propaganda for making it Not Your Fault) but there’s a lot of stigma over personality disorders in particular. How many patients accept it and how does that conversation go ?

The acceptance of a PD diagnosis is usually not an issue if the patient is fairly new to psychiatry, and you talk them through why they meet the criteria and how the diagnosis can help them deal with why life is so difficult for them. Like @Larry David's Opera Cape said, they do suffer.

Unfortunately, though, many PD patients have been given inaccurate diagnoses (PTSD or bipolar 2 are common) previously and they have integrated them in their narrative about themselves. IME those patients often prefer to hang on to that narrative, even though they’ve often gotten treatment for those conditions without any improvement.

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

Unfortunately, though, many PD patients have been given inaccurate diagnoses (PTSD or bipolar 2 are common) previously and they have integrated them in their narrative about themselves. IME those patients often prefer to hang on to that narrative, even though they’ve often gotten treatment for those conditions without any improvement.

Yeah and this is so incredibly common it is starting to muddy up the clinical understanding of PTSD and bipolar 2, because of how there is bleedover into study populations. (The "ultra rapid cycling and doesn't respond to any mood stabilizer and oddly enough is always female" phenomenon at least seems to have finally been called out as a misnomer.) Not to mention in the popular mind- many, many down-at-heel borderline chicks living on SSI for "bipolar."

PTSD is a noble sounding illness, associated still with war heroism and self-sacrifice. Bipolar disorder when properly understood is pretty much totally biological, heavily genetic, and associated with a who's who of artistic luminaries. If some doc told me I had to step down from Hemingway to Amanda Palmer, I'd probably neck too.

 

[Oracular Slug]

That’s reasonable. what kind of rate of ‘acceptance’ is there with these diagnoses?

I think it also depends on which PD they have. For example, people with OCPD may find having an answer somewhat relieving.

 

[fitty tucker]

And these human beings tend to really deeply hate themselves and be terribly afraid much of the time.

This describes anyone with serious mental health issues though, not just borderlines or other PDs.

I would be more sympathetic to Hannah if it weren't for getting fired from the doctor's office and posting all the self injury online. She is absolutely leaving something out about the doctor, and her review of them reads like a cranky 15 year old wrote it. Then to post it online for sympathy, just textbook BPD bullshit. Same with the self-injury. You'd think after breaking your nose multiple times you'd understand you're a fall risk and, uh, install some goddamn safety features, make sure there is always a chair nearby, have a constant sitter (surely someone as sick as her qualifies for a home health care allotment), etc.

Bipolar disorder when properly understood is pretty much totally biological, heavily genetic, and associated with a who's who of artistic luminaries. If some doc told me I had to step down from Hemingway to Amanda Palmer, I'd probably neck

This is fair, honestly. There's also a very tiny number of BPDers who are relieved at getting their diagnosis, because they thought they were just evil deep down, or born bad. Those tend to be the ones that are legitimately excited to start therapy and really lean into learning coping skills. Like I said before, BPD has a good prognosis when the patient is willing to be EXTREMELY honest and accountable, and constantly work at it, likely for life.

Edit: the subjects in this thread are what separate the BPDs from the BPDemons

 

[Flourishing Pinecone ❧]

Checked in on my pet cow the violinist. Her dad, who is probably in his 50-60s, has been her carer for many months now but has to go back to China.
She's already predicting her demise without his constant attention, and talking about how she had problems with breathing before he arrived and started doing everything for her.

She also recently turned 35. Girl, it's really time to grow up.

 

[huge boobs]

tiffany/RDP has upped her e-begging since being evicted from the nursing home, though is still showing zero insight or taking any accountability for being a general nuisance and terrorist to everyone around her. here's some of her stories from today. never fails to crack me up with saying she's going to be dead in just a few days/weeks/months if nobody donates, yet she's managed to keep herself alive all these years.

Spoiler: buy me a wheelchair and organic juice or else i will die!!!!

of course the evil nursing home stole all 16 bottles of her pepto-bismol. says she can't eat "normally" but is asking for things like nuts, soup, english muffins artichoke hearts, and saltine crackers. her amazon wishlist is also full of supplements and other random spoonie vegan shit like ice packs, a book about dysautonomia, and dr. bronners soap.

i'm not american so i don't know shit about medicaid etc, but i imagine all of her paperwork and records now show that she's a lying grifter and does not need to be in an SNF so i highly doubt she'll go back to a care facility. can't wait for the homeless shelter arc!!!!

 

[RookTheFanatic]

Checked in on my pet cow the violinist.

Oh, I love her. Imagine you break your neck in a tragic accident, see a woman on tiktok with what seems to be a similar condition to yours being able to walk and hold things and play the violin. You think wow, how inspirational!

Only to find out she has bullshit head-falling-off disease, and is only quadriplegic or spastic when she feels like it. Man, I'd be mad. But at least you wouldn't be her dad.

 

[Damn Dumpster Fire]

Checked in on my pet cow the violinist. Her dad, who is probably in his 50-60s, has been her carer for many months now but has to go back to China.
She's already predicting her demise without his constant attention, and talking about how she had problems with breathing before he arrived and started doing everything for her.

She also recently turned 35. Girl, it's really time to grow up.

I’d love to see a timeline on her—I see her on Instagram and can easily tell it’s bullshit, but i haven’t yet been able to dig through and figure out how it got to this point.

 

[GhoulTori]

I met someone recently obviously munching MS IRL, and it made me curious why the online munchies aren’t embracing MS. Especially because MS can be a differential diagnosis that is sometimes confused with stupid and lazy.

 

[It's Never Leprosy]

I can't find anything recent from Agony Autie and I am absolutely taking that as a good thing since she presumably has had baby #2 by now? It was May, wasn't it? All her sm is flogging her Fringe show from last summer. Looks like she last posted around 4 mos ago.

Maybe it's like Janjan and the hormones hit the right way this time.

 

[OrSoHelpMe]

I can't find anything recent from Agony Autie and I am absolutely taking that as a good thing since she presumably has had baby #2 by now? It was May, wasn't it? All her sm is flogging her Fringe show from last summer. Looks like she last posted around 4 mos ago.

Maybe it's like Janjan and the hormones hit the right way this time.

Didn’t she lose custody of Frank or something? Maybe she’s in danger of losing baby #2 and has quieted down to manage that?

 

[Not_a_Doctor]

Checked in on my pet cow the violinist. Her dad, who is probably in his 50-60s, has been her carer for many months now but has to go back to China.
She's already predicting her demise without his constant attention, and talking about how she had problems with breathing before he arrived and started doing everything for her.

She also recently turned 35. Girl, it's really time to grow up.

Can you post a link or reminder of the username for those of us with shoddy memories?

@huge boobs thanks for more Tiffany detritus. Lentils, jerky, artichokes, fruit juice - none of this is recommended for gastroparesis! Why isn’t she just on a proper low-residue diet? Ah yes, because she’s making it all up and has no health professional helping her manage. If she needed all that crap on her wishlist it would be made available to her. I too am looking forward to this next arc.

@GhoulTori you do see plenty of OTTs claiming “undiagnosed autoimmune” and they are all hoping it is MS - I bet they couldn’t name two other autoimmune diseases. The relapse-remitting makes it easy for them to only have it on days they have adult responsibilities. It’s easy to test for but doctors won’t do a spinal tap without a good reason so they can claim they have been gaslighted and the meanie doctor won’t send them for diagnosis. HOW DARE YOU REQUIRE A DIAGNOSIS SELF DIAGNOSIS IS TOTALLY VALID OMG YOU ABLEIST SCUM!