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

[cuddle striker]

low potassium: I have this. if I have to go get a blood test? I eat a fucking banana. cured.

your diet choices account for almost all those metabolic numbers. it's easy for someone to fake this shit: don't eat right. cut out things with potassium in then from your diet for a few weeks, then go in on an empty stomach to get your blood test. insist you're fatigued, fake a faint. you'll get a saline drip and maybe some electrolytes in it.

that's not heavy-duty shit.

now, the ones with lines/ports, they've done this or other munchie tricks often enough to convince a doctor they can't handle so many ivs. once they've got ready access, they can fake anemia, make themselves septic, etc by using that port. they can inject salt water, other things, to fuck up their levels. then they need stronger and stronger treatments. some have injected straight sugar water, thinking they'll pop up as diabetic (and need a dog, pump, etc) but all it does is fuck up the vein, usually, it's kind of nasty.

there's also ways to test for all of these things if any worker involved in the case thinks it's self inflicted; there's very simple ways to test for it. usually though, medical workers like to take patients at their word (unless they're seeking pain medication in the US.)

I don't want to get too detailed because I know these special salty princesses read here and I don't want them to get ideas.

untreated Lyme can cause pretty unpleasant long term damage, like any untreated illness. your body will fight the infection, it'll pass, it's not chronic lyme. it's after effects from interested Lyme, that is all. antibiotics do not fix it. Lyme treatments do not fix it. symptomatic medications are the usual path (inflamed joints get treated as inflamed joints, not asa Lyme infection, etc) also Lyme is a very geographically limited disease.

fibro is a garbage pail diagnosis, like IBS. cfs is a real illness and can be tested for, inpatient, and usually treated as well. there are people with advanced cfs living fairly normal lives, just with a lot of naps.

fibro, ibs... they're symptoms. not diagnoses.

morgellons is my favorite munchie, that and pots/eds. no proof, no signs, just crap. morgellons can be cured with antipsychotics. it's a beautiful thing to see that fixed, I've seen it cured that way and it was amazing.

 

[uwotm8?]

No Lyme in Australia? I find that hard to believe since everything fucking kills you out there.

Edit: I posted this a bit too early and remembered something. I've seen Any a lot in my recommendations on yt, feel like I need more of a source she's faking. She posts a lot of stuff with her in hospital obviously, but some of the stuff she's been in for and on IV treatment for isn't just stuff you'd give willy-nilly to someone. I believe she was on a lot of potassium infusions recently for example or something like that. The doctors must have done bloods etc on her, I'm confused at why she wouldn't have been caught if she's in hospital having that many invasive procedures. She doesn't seem to shop around, it's the same hospital. she claims to have POTS, EDS and Gastroparesis mainly so I know that's prime content for faking, are people suggesting it's all self induced? If so, this is probably the most shook I've been since Venus had that illegal surgery. Unless there's like hard evidence Im always on the fence with munchie cows, maybe cause of my work and own experiences- I'm always willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, but some conditions are hard to prove you actually have and being assumed that you're just making it up is horrible. Taking advantage of that and using it for making money etc like cows do really rubs me the wrong way.

So yeah source on Amy pls.

There's a bunch of shit on reddit, but the tl;dr is she's a closeted ana-chan who started off trying to get in with the ED community and I guess left there in favor of the spoonie shtick. Maybe she couldn't get her ass skinny enough to fit in, who knows. But she most likely had low potassium from the constant purging "draining" through her GJ-tube that she hates to talk about because YOU GUUYYYSSS, you know she can't possibly run feeds because she just cant tolerate them and talking about it makes her feel ewy because god forbid she keeps any calories inside her digestive tract.
She eats burgers, McDonald's, fries and then claims that it's totally okay because she can drain it all (which is total bullshit unless her mouth is as powerful as a top quality blender). She has also never mentioned any clogging of her tube which would be impossible if she really was trying to drain all this shit through her tube.
There's also a bunch of documentation on lolcow (ana-chan threads) about her photo shopping to look skinnier than she actually is and it's pretty god damn laughable. She clearly just wants to look as sick as possible but then claims that at her lowest weight she was horrified by what she saw.
Also pulled a little bit of a vampire Kelly just after she got her Hickman put in. It was some impossible drop in her hemoglobin that occurred completely randomly and she had to get a transfusion.
Loves to tote around a vogmask like all the cool spoonies because of that super severe MCAS that she apparently has, except when it's too inconvenient then it's suddenly fine.

She's clearly hypermobile. She probably does have EDS. But as for the POTS, GP and MCAS? Very doubtful. She's full of a lot of shit. Just because she got some lines and treatment doesn't mean shit imo.

 

[cuddle striker]

She's clearly hypermobile. She probably does have EDS.

x does not equal y.

you can be hypermobile and not have EDS.

 

[There_is_no_Dana]

Someone I know insists she has Fibromyalgia. She sure loves her pain pills. Her last doctor put her on an SSRI and vitamin D, fixed the problem right up.

 

[cuddle striker]

Someone I know insists she has Fibromyalgia. She sure loves her pain pills. Her last doctor put her on an SSRI and vitamin D, fixed the problem right up.

fibro can be a very nasty physical symptom of real depression. having depression sounds mundane to a lot of people because they don't realize how shit it actually is, it's a serious mental illness that has physical symptoms.

opiates have been shown in clinical trials to treat depression, so really, a lot of these addicts are self-medicating with pain pills. they do work. they're just not good for you in the long run/addictive.

I'm glad she's better.

 

[Cryptozoology]

This might be a powerlevel, but I have a really personal experience with a munchie.

Munchies bother me enough as is, but watching my own family member devolve into this nonsense is just infuriating.

She has a "service dog", the largest dog she could possibly get (a Saint Bernard) and whines all the damn time about anxiety and muh pee tee ess dee. She's completely able bodied. She even played sports growing up. It's just one thing after another. Once the diagnosis of the day is no longer shocking, it's the next one up.

She slipped and fell down the stairs once as a kid. Bent her tailbone, which really hurt but it went back to normal. After that shock wore off, she claimed spinal bifida, and then it somehow became her claiming scoliosis.

Someone in the house is sick? She's sicker. She'd purposely not eat or drink so she'd faint. She was in the nurse's office four days a week, and in the hospital as often as she possibly could be. After learning about the psych unit, she would fake having hallucinations so she could go. Naturally, she'd brag about her meds but never take them (and when she did, she'd brag about the side effects).

It's so frustrating because I know so much about her past and why she's like this, but she refuses to get the right kind of help and will cut anyone who won't enable her out of her life without hesitation... hell, at 17 she replaced her entire family with her 25 year old boyfriend and his family of useful idiots. Burned every bridge because we cared too much to give in to her constant need for pity and attention. Now that she's 18 and sitting pretty with a house full of enablers, there's nothing anyone can do.

 

[Otterly]

Fibromyalgia is a catch all diagnosis of exclusion. It basically means ‘I can see something is wrong but you don’t fit any profile, take these drugs and go away.’
You get a lot of women told they have it when actually they have undiagnosed rheumatic issues like one of the seronegative arthritis types. The USA hands opioids out like sweeties, so you get a lot of drug seekers as well. Uk and Europe are (depending on country) far stricter on painkillers. I had major abdominal surgery and just got paracetamol after - they really don’t like giving out opioids and fair enough, they’re addictive.

What most patients with a fibro diagnosis need is a decent rheumatology workup, tests for some of the weirder rarer stuff (like Whipple’s disease) to exclude actual physical causes. Then diet and lifestyle changes (weight loss, more excercise.) they also need someone to take them seriously in a way - somatising psychological pain is a real thing.

Cfs is real - there appear to be mitochondrial issues.

IBS is a symptom (as someone said above) and can actually be related to pain through HLA b27- type diseases (Spondylarthritis often presents with IBS and inflammatory bowel disease.) but again these are things you can test for - there’s no single diagnostic yes/no test but there are patterns of lab results and findings on MRI /x ray imaging.

 

[eternal dog mongler]

You get a lot of women told they have it when actually they have undiagnosed rheumatic issues like one of the seronegative arthritis types. The USA hands opioids out like sweeties, so you get a lot of drug seekers as well. Uk and Europe are (depending on country) far stricter on painkillers. I had major abdominal surgery and just got paracetamol after - they really don’t like giving out opioids and fair enough, they’re addictive.

The US is cracking down on opiates. Some hospitals don't even give them out post-op anymore. You aren't really getting shit for a fibro diagnosis now except maybe tramadol/gabapentin if you're lucky. Ten years ago you could sail away on the Good Ship Vicodin though.

Fibro is interesting because everyone who has it has elevated C-RP levels, same as people with severe depression and autoimmune diseases. We did have one patient with fibro who actually had psoriatic arthritis but it went undiagnosed due to no visible external signs. I think fibro ends up being a diagnosis to get patients to go away rather than figuring out what's causing the pain, so I've been pushing to refer these patients to endos/rheumatologists.

 

[Otterly]

Fibro is interesting because everyone who has it has elevated C-RP levels

Yeah and that in itself is interesting. Inflammation in the chronic form is a modern plague - it seems as though the ‘off’ switch isn’t being hit with inflammation caused by things like obesity, metabolic syndrome etc as opposed to beneficial short term inflammation from injury. So there are a lot of people with elevated CRP and eSR with fuzzy symptoms. Anyone presenting with fibro symptoms needs rheumatology workup - because there’s a big overlap. I mean think of psoriatic arthritis or a seronegative spondylarthopathy - pain, stiffness, cognitive symptoms, it’s all there.

I find munchies fascinating. what makes people want to be sick? The psychology of it is fascinating, from both sides. Because there’s two considerations from the medical side.

1. Rare diseases do exist, and doctors are often egotistical enough to think they can crack a puzzle, while simultaneously..
2. Humble enough to know that shit does get missed, and ..

3 paranoid enough to dread being responsible for one of those ‘doctors sent little tommy home and told his mum he had a cold, three hours later he was dead’ headlines...

 

[eternal dog mongler]

I find munchies fascinating. what makes people want to be sick? The psychology of it is fascinating, from both sides.

Attention on social media. That's seriously the reason.

Munchies back in the day used to bother healthcare staff as a form of social interaction where they were cared for. Now the modern munchies just post on Instagram to get asspats.

POTS/gastro/EDS are easy to fake. Ever wonder why none of them post their GJ-tubes hooked up to a feed?

 

[MirnaMinkoff]

Fibromyalgia is a catch all diagnosis of exclusion. It basically means ‘I can see something is wrong but you don’t fit any profile, take these drugs and go away.’
You get a lot of women told they have it when actually they have undiagnosed rheumatic issues like one of the seronegative arthritis types. The USA hands opioids out like sweeties, so you get a lot of drug seekers as well. Uk and Europe are (depending on country) far stricter on painkillers. I had major abdominal surgery and just got paracetamol after - they really don’t like giving out opioids and fair enough, they’re addictive.

What most patients with a fibro diagnosis need is a decent rheumatology workup, tests for some of the weirder rarer stuff (like Whipple’s disease) to exclude actual physical causes. Then diet and lifestyle changes (weight loss, more excercise.) they also need someone to take them seriously in a way - somatising psychological pain is a real thing.

Cfs is real - there appear to be mitochondrial issues.

IBS is a symptom (as someone said above) and can actually be related to pain through HLA b27- type diseases (Spondylarthritis often presents with IBS and inflammatory bowel disease.) but again these are things you can test for - there’s no single diagnostic yes/no test but there are patterns of lab results and findings on MRI /x ray imaging.

I lived in an area with a big opiate problem and I never met one person who claimed to have fibro who wasn’t a addict/ drug seeker. Fibro became a code word for drug seeking here. For some reason drug seeking men always got some vague “back pain” or slip disc.

It was weird that two identical drug seeking populations could be perfectly split by gender/diagnosis. Never met one man with a Fibro Dx. I always thought it was because doctors were more willing to take complaints of men more seriously (at least initially) than females.

 

[cuddle striker]

I lived in an area with a big opiate problem and I never met one person who claimed to have fibro who was a addict/ drug seeker. Fibro became a code word for drug seeking here. For some reason drug seeking men always got some vague “back pain” or slip disc.

It was weird that two identical drug seeking populations could be perfectly split by gender/diagnosis. Never met one man with a Fibro Dx. I always thought it was because doctors were more willing to take complaints of men more seriously (at least initially) than females.

drug seeking and malingering men complain of different things, though. back pain, headaches, and muscular issues.

munchie men are rare. they're out there, though. usually with a "bum leg" or a "rotator cuff" (no descriptor attached).

 

[eternal dog mongler]

drug seeking and malingering men complain of different things, though. back pain, headaches, and muscular issues.

munchie men are rare. they're out there, though. usually with a "bum leg" or a "rotator cuff" (no descriptor attached).

The only munchie man I've ever run in to was some frequent flyer at the ER who used to chop his fingers off so he could flirt with the nurses. I guess munchie men go hard. Or they don't really receive asspats for being a sick little princess.

Drug-seeking malingerers are common though. Please tell me more about your 10/10 back pain.

 

[cuddle striker]

. Please tell me more about your 10/10 back pain.

... while you argue with your girlfriend on your phone about something, yes that's 10/10 pain definitely

 

[Otterly]

10/10 back pain = patient whose crumbling lower spine leads to a vertebral process crushing a nerve root over a day or so leading to its eventual dissection. Bone mets. Some slipped discs (they vary.) Spinal (Dural puncture type) headaches.

Edited to avoid double posting. Just looked at the picture of her (morgan’s) feet posted a while back and hey! I found something wrong with her! She appears to have very mild webbing (syndactyly) of her second and third toes on the right foot. Of course this means nothing in and of itself. About 1/2000 people have some degree of it.

And blue veins? Hahahah... those of us from The frozen north are practically translucent year round.

 

[The Un-Clit]

Then there's James Frey, an author who came under fire for his books A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard.
These books were presented as memoirs of his struggle to overcome drug addiction and alcoholism. Riveting reading, until everyone (including Oprah) found out most of it never happened.

I know this post is old as fuck, but OMG James Frey. My dear old mother was SO moved by Oprah's original show with the guy that she ran out and got his Million Little Pieces book and wouldn't stop bashing my ear about it every time there was a family thing.

Finally to stop her pestering me I promised to read his 'OMG SO INSPIRATIONAL' story, and i really couldn't help but think how much it sounded like one of those 'wish fulfilment about how my life could have been' stories people vomit all over the internet. Not a TOTAL lie, but full of lulzy exaggerations like getting a bunch of root canals without anesthetic because "he still had crack cocaine in his system and the dentist said it could kill him if anesthetic was used." which even OPL could see is total bullshit, to blatant lies about his mafia buddy.

When I returned the book and gave her my honest opinion, she was quite butthurt about it. Got very defensive claiming Oprah investigates ALL this before letting anyone on the show, and you're just being a cynical asshole etc etc.

Come a few months later when the bullshit pile grew deep enough for Oprah's researchers to finally smell it, and I waited for the humbled return call....

But yeah, it just goes to show how people, even smart people who should know better, are very fast to accept this kind of inspirational bullshit on faith, and resist even when evidence points clearly to the lies.

I guess if that wasn't part of human nature, we wouldn't have half as many lolcows as we do.

 

[eternal dog mongler]

Finally to stop her pestering me I promised to read his 'OMG SO INSPIRATIONAL' story, and i really couldn't help but think how much it sounded like one of those 'wish fulfilment about how my life could have been' stories people vomit all over the internet. Not a TOTAL lie, but full of lulzy exaggerations like getting a bunch of root canals without anesthetic because "he still had crack cocaine in his system and the dentist said it could kill him if anesthetic was used." which even OPL could see is total bullshit, to blatant lies about his mafia buddy.

Frey fucked himself over trying to pass A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard off as his personal memoir. As fiction, they're not really bad. Not that great, either. It's not really believable.

No dentist is going to perform a root canal without at least local anesthesia. They're painful. It'd be like performing general surgery without anesthesia. Your patient would just get up and shove the scalpel up your ass during the first incision.

 

[Orc Girls Make Due]

Frey fucked himself over trying to pass A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard off as his personal memoir. As fiction, they're not really bad. Not that great, either. It's not really believable.

No dentist is going to perform a root canal without at least local anesthesia. They're painful. It'd be like performing general surgery without anesthesia. Your patient would just get up and shove the scalpel up your ass during the first incision.

If the shock from pain didn't make you pass out or seize firstly, then the horrid reaction your body would have after could possibly kill you. There's a reason anesthesia exists these days, and even far back in the 18th century they were trying to use things like drinking alcohol or ether as a way to numb the patient.

 

[neverendingmidi]

Dogs pick up on small increases in isoprene on the human breath that predicate a hypoglycemic episode. They can actually detect certain forms of cancer too, although the mechanism isn't really known.

Because they descended from wolves, who hunt by picking out the sickest, weakest motherfucker they can from the herd. It's useful to be able to smell a variety of disease states.

A friend of my mother's had a dog that would fuss if her blood sugar went low. The lady didn't train the dog, it just caught on to the fact that when its person smelled a certain way then other things happened until the person didn't smell like that anymore. She thought it was really useful.

 

[cuddle striker]

A friend of my mother's had a dog that would fuss if her blood sugar went low. The lady didn't train the dog, it just caught on to the fact that when its person smelled a certain way then other things happened until the person didn't smell like that anymore. She thought it was really useful.

there are dogs that can detect sugar drops/highs, oncoming seizures, and cancer. the seizure detector and blood sugar dogs are usually small, and carried so that they can smell the person's breath or skin. they can be medical service dogs.

all other service dogs will be bigger breeds.

all of them will be totally under their user's control and calm, they won't be interested in anyone but the person using them.

spoonies love to buy vests and patches and papers and shit and never bother to actually train the dog to focus. actual service dogs usually have a harness or vest, sometimes unlabeled. they won't legally have to show you any papers and they may tell you to just call the cops if you don't like it, there's a huge fine for kicking out a real service dog.

any dog that's not focused on the user is likely not a real sd, despite any and all decoration proclaiming it as such.