To think something is off here?

No consultant would discuss the content of a patient’s medical history with a ‘friend’, surely?

Just joining with my contribution to the never-ending truth that people are weird! But starting off with my best friend, who died from a brain tumour despite exhaustive treatment. The cancer had wide-ranging effects both physically and mentally, as did the treatment; I doubt anyone could fake it convincingly.

I have a now-distanced friend with a "very aggressive stage 4" cancer that very definitely wasn't. She may have had an early-diagnosed cancer successfully treated, I don't know. A few years later, though, it became apparent that she was developing Alzheimer's. She could've misinterpreted her early symptoms and even treatment due to muddled cognition.

Far more spectacularly, I was socially involved for a while with an absolute raging narcissist, who was incredibly entertaining but dangerous to the unwary. She had a brain tumour, ovarian and vaginal cancer, heart disease and a bunch of other things. Throughout it all she was energetic, charming, beautiful and grasping. All her diseases were terminal but she eschewed traditional medicine, spending tens of thousands of other people's money on spiritual healers and holistic treatments. She could've made a fortune putting her manipulative charms to legitimate use but, evidently, preferred grifting.

Then there was Gilly at work, who very obviously had anorexia but chose to present as suffering an unspecified cancer that she had for the whole four years I knew her. She had regular hospital appointments, returning to work the same or next day, and only took homeopathic medicines. She cropped up on my LinkedIn recently, having worked up until retirement (so she's been healthier than me!)

The insides of other people's heads are nothing if not interesting 😏

Taking a moment to think of friends Meghan, Steve, Jackie and Paul, whose glioblastomas killed them 💔🌹

I don’t know if it was the same type of cancer but my mum got lung cancer in 2016 which spread to her brain in 2017 . She had chemo, radiotherapy, immunotherapy and some other form of radiation. To the out side world you wouldn’t have known anything was different, she was self employed and continued working until 3.5 years after her first cancer diagnosis she started to deteriorate and died 2 months later.

My bil had an aggressive form of cancer, he never once spoke about it and was the picture of health. He was in Japan the week before he died, on a business trip.

Almost certainly your colleague is a trooper like bil,and deserves your support and respect. If it turns out she is lying - which I very much doubt - then she also has big problems of a different variety. Mental health problems. Either way she would be hurt to know you doubt her because she is managing so well.

Another one for team dubious. Glioblastomas are aggressive and very nasty. To be staged so highly and not have had any prolonged absence/ obvious illness is very odd. I would have expected with that prognosis for her to die within a year tbh. I sincerely hope she doesn’t have this. Surgery ( which would not remove all cancer, it’s impossible with the spread of tumour) radiation and chemo would follow. Often it’s an oral chemo given. Plus it’s staged on the appearance of cells in the tumour. Not metastasised with GBM you are very unlikely to never see it elsewhere on body. It’s very specific to brain. And very untreatable so any life expectancy will be severely shortened. If she’s one of the rare >5 years survivors then I’m pleased for her and if she feels good during this horrific illness then she’s a bloody trooper and putting an incredibly brave face on an awful situation. I wish her well if it’s the latter. I cannot fathom anyone seeking attention by making this up though and would question what she has to gain if you are all remote and she’s not actually asking for anything such as some of the previous posters have described with their scammers. If she’s not looking for anything - time off/money/attention then where’s the scam?

Google 'Scamanda' it does happen.

My cousin had brain surgery and was left with a shaved head and a massive scar. I think his was benign. Many people in our family have died from cancer but I understand his particular cancer wasn’t malignant and it required no chemo and never came back.

I have another cousin that had a type of leukaemia that you don’t have chemo for immediately. You just monitor it and it can resolve on its own. But it still meant she couldn’t have any more children but she was stable and required no chemo unless it got worse. Fast forward a few years and she’s telling people it’s full blown cancer and she requires chemo. But she never said what specific type of cancer (if anyone has had cancer or knows someone who had it’s a very specific type with a specific sub-type) and while she had specialist appointments she could never say it was with an oncologist or a haematologist. She said she had chemo but couldn’t tell anyone the type of drugs (chemo isn’t always IV either - but she insisted she was “going to chemo” appointments).

Eventually she said it was cured by a man she met at a resort who had the cure for cancer. In conclusion she was full of shit.

Another cousin had chemo drugs to treat a medical condition that was putting her into organ failure and everything else had failed (this was a last attempt to save her life - she was dying). She was so unwell and could name specialists and specific hospitals. She got better and looked so much better and it was clear she received treatment. She didn’t lose her hair but you don’t always lose your hair.

I’m suspicious of your friend too.

I can't imagine what her motivation would be to lie about such a thing, but it does seem strange. I sadly knew someone with this and they died within a year and it was a pretty miserable year, like another poster mentioned, with a lot of swelling from the steroids. Maybe her surgery was more successful than most?

Sounds very odd to me, my friend died of this when she was only 38 with two very young children, it’s one of the most awful cancers. Because of treatment, her whole personality changed very quickly and she was swollen from steroids and looked very ill. I’m not saying this is the same for everyone with this type of cancer but it her behaviour would ring alarm bells for me.

I'm really sorry your mum went through all that. She was lucky the doctor was honest about the radiation. It's something I won't have, either.

My mother died of a glioblastoma - she was diagnosed in the October and was dead by the following January. Her specialist said this form of cancer grows rather like a weed through the structure of the brain rather than forming a lump so is often very tricky to operate on. Mum could not have surgery therefore - and also turned down all cancer treatment because the specialist told her the treatment (radiotherapy on the brain) would likely make her more ill than the cancer.

I realise various glioblastomas have differing trajectories but your colleague's cancer trajectory seems from my limited experience rather unusual but then I'm no expert.

I had brain surgery about 2 yrs ago and they did one of the biggest cuts, a huge C shape from the top of my ear, into my hair and up onto the top of my head to the edge of my forehead. They did not shave my head beyond the tiny line where they cut, so you couldn't see it after the dried blood and stitches were gone.

What I'd say is this - tumors can appear in all different parts of the brain, sometimes you can have symptoms that are obvious to others, like a stroke or the inability to speak or walk, you can have headaches, blurred or double vision and you can lose control of your bladder and bowels. You can have personality changes, rages, loss of inhibitions. There's a long list. Not every symptom can be "seen".

I would give this woman the benefit of the doubt to be honest, its a fucking horrible thing to live with and if there's even a fraction of a chance she is faking it, then she has MH issues.

One of my surgical team operated on a man with glioblastoma and because he got the whole thing out in one go and used radiation "wafers" that he'd invented, the man is still alive and kicking, 20 yrs later (Johns Hopkins hospital, Baltimore).

I know the poet Tobias Hill had a seizure in 2014 when a glioblastoma was found. He suffered disabilities as a result of this, but didn't die until 2023.

So there's benchmarks to do with life expectancy (12-18 months being the "norm") and there's exceptions.

Aaah I also need to add that perhaps they removed a lot of the tumour but have been honest with her that it will grow back and they are just buying her time. So she could be looking relatively well at the moment. The suspicious thing is her not missing much time from work. My brother was in and out of hospitals, staying for weeks at a time.

My brother went through all this over ten years ago, and actually it was radio necrosis which mostly killed him (I think). To be honest I tried not to think too much about his illness at the time, it was too much to comprehend, I considered my role to be light relief, support, latest gossip on Game of Thrones, etc.

I do know that shortly after my brother’s death doctors made huge progress with brain tumour treatment using proton beams etc, which can target the radiotherapy beams more accurately and cause less radio necrosis and people are much less ill after treatment. So that could be another reason she is less unwell with it.

The size and placement of the tumour has a big impact on how unwell she is. Although I’m surprised the headaches alone allow her to work so well.

I just don’t know. Her talking about it a lot isn’t a red flag to me, it’s pretty much the biggest thing going on in her life at the moment.

OP if you see this woman only at work, you are probably seeing her on her absolute best days. For all you know she may be dosed up on pain meds and when she goes home she might be a complete wreck. Or perhaps she was initially misdiagnosed and actually has a less agressive type of brain tumour.

So yes, YABU. Look at it this way: would you rather be the person that was unkind to a colleague who was dying from brain cancer, or the person that was taken for a mug.

Hi

My brother had a glioblastoma brain tumour. He was ill for about 3 or 4 years until he died.

About a year before he died you could definitely tell he had cancer. He lost his hair due to the chemo, he was a strange grey colour (looked really ill) and got very thin. I can’t remember when he had to stop driving.

He had his tumour removed (as much of it as he could) and there was a whopping great scar all across his head, with huge staples in. His hair grew back in and hid the scar mostly, but could still be seen if you looked.

Towards the end when he knew he was terminal it was very very clear that he was very very sick. He lost his dexterity with his hands, and his speech went very slurred.

I’m going to stop writing now because I don’t like remembering him like this; and I haven’t thought of him like this in a long time (he died 10 years ago aged 26) but your post does ring alarm bells.

However, like you said, maybe she’s wearing a wig, maybe her tumour is pressing on a different part of her brain so her symptoms are different/less severe, maybe she’s good at make up, maybe she’s taking better care of herself than my brother did. This is not really something that you can fake easily so I imagine she has the paperwork to back it up, (and there would be a LOT of paperwork) and also, (and it’s horrible to say it) the proof will be in the pudding as to whether she is around in a couple of years time.

If the woman does have Stage 4 glioblastoma brain cancer then the poor woman and her family are going to go through actual hell soon. Probably best to assume it’s true and help where you can.

Only about 5% of patients diagnosed with Glioblastoma are around five years later, and I am certain those have had treatment. Stage 4 means that it’s metastasized. She probably would have had immunotherapy or chemotherapy after radiation treatments. She would normally have a prognosis of about 18m with glioblastoma. Less with stage 4. I’m very suspicious about this.

My aunty sadly died from this. But she fought for 6 years and had 3 surgeries. But only 12 weeks off work in total. She was a teacher and it really kept her going.

In a pub I used to run we ran a fundraiser for MacMillan. One of our regulars had cancer (so she said) lost her hair and everyone was gutted for her and supported the fund raiser. We raised over £2k, which was good going for a small village pub.

Except every so often her hair grew a bit and then disappeared again. So another regular contacted the charity and there had been no donation. Then a week or so later we received a very obviously photocopied and doctored "Thank you" cert that was later confirmed to have not come from MM. It was agreed to contact the police so she said she would donate £500 if we didnt and then disappeared. After some further SM digging, turns out that she did this when she lived in Aus and skipped out with many many thousands,

I was particularly pissed off as she was always pleading poverty and when I was getting rid of some furniture, I offered it to her for nothing when I could have sold it. She said that she would like X & Y if I could drop it off but didnt want the sofa (she was sitting on boxes so she said) as she didnt like the colour.

Took us all for mugs.

Hi op sometimes people do lie about this.type of thing. I knew someone.who pretended they had cancer. They'd been caught cheating on their girlfriend and then did a big thing about I've got.cancer that's why I've been off thr rails For ages they kept up the pretence it was only when they were beaten up.one night and left for dead that at hospital the man's friends asked a consultant about whether the injuries would affect the cancer and were told there was no cancer on the medical records. It was distressing for everyone involved. I do wonder where that man is now and if he lied again.

I can’t even comprehend how someone would lie about this but I saw this documentary (can’t remember where) where an Australian woman Belle something did just that. I mean it’s just unbelievable.

Well asking her is the only way you'll find out, you're definitely not going to find out on here 🙄

A close relative died of this. She was incredibly ill, it was traumatising watching her decline. I actually hope she is making it up, it is an utterly horrific illness.

However, trajectories of illnesses can vary and it is probably best to keep your suspicions to yourself. People who make things like that up are often found out in the end anyway.

Thank you. He was very grateful for the four and a half “extra” years as it gave him more time with his dc and it allowed them all to prepare for the inevitable as a family. Still completely devastating of course but four and a half years is a significant chunk of time in a child’s life which he didn’t anticipate he would have.

Imho, you can tell a fair amount from how someone discusses their illness, as to whether it is genuine or not, especially with oncology, as it is all so technical and complex and the terminology is hard to fake.

Having said that op, chemo and radiation therapies have moved on in recent years, improved treatments are tolerated better, and people can appear outwardly to be reasonably well when going through them, so I think you must give your colleague the benefit of the doubt.

It’s a pretty risky strategy to fake a terminal illness anyway as those specific lies are bound to be exposed at some point! You would have to be seriously unhinged to do it.