To think something is off here?

Yes all glioblastoma are grade 4 and rarely metastasise , They are extremely invasive and not one 'lump' so to speak, they have 'legs' and are almost impossible to remove completely.

I have a close relative with brain cancer in the frontal lobe. Initial symptoms were seizures which would be difficult to hide but obviously not everyone presents with the same symptoms. He had to stop work due to the seizures.
The first brain biopsy was ‘easy’ and he was relatively back to normal within 10 days.
He has since had a complete resection due to the size of the tumor growth over the last two years. The growth itself presented with noticeable physical limitations in terms of his mobility (it affected one side of his body), speech was slurred, memory affected and his executive functioning was impaired to the point where he was unable to function independently (he basically went crazy and made some terrible life decisions). It would have been hard to ignore the signs.
Post surgery he had chemo and radiotherapy and not a lot has changed despite the tumor being almost 100% removed. He is now in full time care.

But not everyone is the same. I met a friend whose husband died from brain cancer and he had surgery twice to remove tumors. The first time he returned to work and was himself. The second time she says he was noticeably ill and eventually succumbed.

I guess the things that would affect your appearance and behavior would be size of tumor, whether it’s a reoccurrence (surgery a 2nd time is rare I believe due to poor prognosis), how early it is treated, your general overall health in order to cope better and then where in the brain the tumor is and what body and mental functions are affected by that area of the brain.

That also being said, chemo and radiotherapy are particularly fatigue inducing treatments.

How awful. I so sorry, this is terribly intrusive, but please can I ask what happened to her children? I’ll be worrying about them all day otherwise. Hope you all are doing ok considering x

Or perhaps it wasn’t a brain tumour but a pituitary tumour, which are usually benign. The pituitary is on the underside if the brain, but a pituitary tumour is not a brain tumour.

My husband died from this. Its the most aggressive form of cancer there is, there is no cure, no getting better, 2yrs max if your lucky (very few get to 5yrs) Symptoms very but effects speech/movement. Brain surgery is intense, they can remove some of it but not all (they call it the spider cancer, its legs grows round the brain), they shave your hair and your in hosp recovering for at least 4-6 weeks.

to lie about this (or any cancer/illness) is despicable and an insult to those who have it/or watched someone go through it.

Going by the type of cancer I'd presume someone would be very obviously ill and unable to work. My mum had a stage 4 glioblastoma and died within 6 weeks, she had so many symptoms but she never got any treatment as it was too advanced. My dad had lymphoma and you would never have known he was sick at all. He breezed through his surgery and treatments, had no side effects.

Yeah. There’s just no way that is remotely true. Brain surgery takes it out of you and I can’t think of any operations under GA where you’d be able to do the school run hours later. Maybe the pp meant her friend had a radiotherapy session or something.

I don’t know if you’re colleague is faking or not but if I was diagnosed with such an aggressive poor prognosis cancer the very last thing I’d be doing is going to work . I’d tap my pension, savings , benefits whatever to enjoy my last months / years .

I couldn’t even do that after having a colonoscopy under ga.

Grade 4 might mean it can be operated on and removed and with treatment prevented from recurring if they get it all out.

Also generally not for a glioblastoma. Even if they get it all out it usually comes back very quickly. I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone surviving it long term (as in being cured from it) but maybe there are some.
With things like breast cancer they use both grading and staging and you can have a high grade tumour but early stage and you can get rid of it and it then doesn’t come back. But I don’t think the same applies for brain tumours like this one.

I don’t think staging is used for glioblastoma. It also doesn’t really spread to other organs. All glioblastomas are grade 4.

Also is it possible it’s a grade 4 glioblastoma not stage 4? Because these are very different things.

Grade 4 means the cells are highly abnormal (and I believe all glioblastomas are classified as grade 4 because of the type cancer it is). Stage 4 means it has metastasised beyond the local area, to the lungs or the liver, for example.

Grade 4 might mean it can be operated on and removed and with treatment prevented from recurring if they get it all out. Stage 4 would mean it’s spread such that it would be difficult to cure.

I believe so.

When she first joined the family, she had ‘kidney failure’. When the children came along, they had the medical problems.

I later found out that her parents and siblings had challenged her over her behaviour which was when she’d moved on to fooling our family.

Once her children were older, the focus moved back to the relative.

Looking back, I’m most disturbed by the first child’s accidents.

I’m told that there was also some insurance fraud - non-medical.

I used to flat share with someone who lied about having cancer and various other ailments. She went so far as to get doctors to perform exploratory abdominal surgery on her. They couldn’t find anything wrong and she then claimed to have melanoma and breast cancer. It was exhausting. She had various other issues and I think it was obvious to most people that she wasn’t normal. I can’t say for sure about your colleague but it does sound odd that someone who had brain radiation and brain surgery didn’t lose their hair or suffer any other effects. Like you said it could have been a wig but if I’d had my scalp sliced open I wouldn’t want to wear a wig for a good while until the scar had healed. And if it wasn’t a wig, her hair would have been shaved where they made the incision. Usually whole brain radiation also causes hair loss.
I guess she could be lucky but 🧐

I struggled with a similar situation in recent years. I asked on Mumsnet as I didn’t feel it was a subject I could bring up with anyone in real life.

This was a man who claimed to have a brain tumour and convinced the entire community. He even pre booked and arranged his funeral.
He had two biopsies (he said) to confirm the stage of the cancer. The first supposed biopsy he was dropped off at hospital and said he didn’t want anyone to visit him. His entire head had been shaved one length, and no shorter length for the biopsy site. No dressing as he said it had healed in the two weeks he had been absent.
He wore a dressing after his supposed second biopsy, but again, after removal, his hair (shaved all over entire head again) was the same length as before, and hadn’t been shaved to scalp on the biopsy site.

He would frequently fall and have fits, and make random noises, to act out his illness, and was helped by people, but he always got drunk beforehand.

He was also still driving around in his car in the midst of all this. Nobody questioned why he was allowed to do this.

We wondered how he would get out of this, and he came up with the story of being misdiagnosed (they missed it during two biopsies 🤔). Apparently it was just a cyst, though that cyst could burst at any time so he’s not allowed to wear tight head gear, like a helmet, for instance.

I can’t believe so many people fall for it and think he’s unwell. It’s damaged the mental health of his family, and he told his young children. A truly awful man.

She had a cancerous brain tumour removed under general anaesthetic and was out of the hospital and picking up her kids at 3pm?
bollocks.

I think it’s really difficult to say. I have stage 3 melanoma. I’ve had 3 surgeries already, look awful because of the scarring, and feel like shit. I’ve been off work nearly a year and definitely do not expect to be able to return to work until 2026 at the earliest. I can barely walk due to treatment side effects.

I know someone with incurable brain cancer (I don’t know if it would technically be stage 4, but it’s basically in an area of the brain where they can’t successfully treat it). She’s a bit bloated, but otherwise has been working and going to the gym and deadlifting crazy amounts. I’m in awe because I can barely get down the stairs in the morning!

I similarly had a friend with stage 4 stomach cancer. She died within 2 years of diagnosis, but she looked great, better than I do!

If she has had time off for surgery and treatment, I would assume she’s had to provide documentation from her doctors and I’d trust HR to deal with that. Funny enough, though I’ve left my job now, I’m fairly certain that my work colleagues thought I was faking it too. Because they are nasty pieces of work. I was there one day and gone the next and then lots of surgeries. No one has ever said it to me directly, but the feel I get from the passive aggressive emails is that they don’t believe me. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I’ve now long stopped caring, but it did annoy me for awhile. I’ve come to accept it says more about them than me, plus I know I’m not faking it.

@KimberleyClark This is a fascinating listen.

There’s also a podcast on BBC Sounds called Believe in Magic, about an extraordinary case of Munchhausen’s by proxy, in which a mother pretends her daughter has a brain tumour. It’s incredible,wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t heard it.

A friend of mine had a brain tumour removed on the morning and was on the school run in the afternoon.
My dad was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and you wouldn’t know he was poorly until 7 months later - within a month he was dead. He’d gone back to work etc. he couldn’t have chemo.

No I haven't. I've heard of the name belle gibson though. The cancer I have will kill me at some point and I know I'll just get triggered from it all. It if it's worth a watch I might watch it.

I would also be very suspicious, especially in the absence of no physical signs such as shaved head, scars, weight loss, or any prolonged absences from work. Someone with such an aggressive tumour surely doesn’t take only a matter of days off work?? Was the headscarf supposed to be covering like a patch of shaved hair and a wound of some sort? Because for the scarf now just to be gone with her hair and head just looking normal, I would definitely be smelling a rat!

There’s not a lot you can do either way anyway except retain a quiet sense of scepticism. You can’t say anything without being 100% sure.

Dotjones:

It sounds very suspicious. You shouldn't confront her with your findings but ideally you should contact your manager, HR or someone with the power to investigate.

Absolutely not.

If OP has no evidence and is relying only on her suspicions she should not contact HR "to investigate".

My husband’s late wife had this type of cancer and she was ostensibly ‘well’ until very near the end of her life. She lived for five years with very few outward signs of the disease, went to uni, had a job etc then went downhill very suddenly. So it’s entirely possible that it’s the same for this lady.