To know anyone irl with munchausens?

[Lw87]

Watching the gypsy rose doc, I'd never heard of munchausens disease before and can't even think I'd know anyone with it in real life

Has anyone actually had an RL encounter with someone with this?

Becca. I’m so sorry you experienced all that.

I’m wondering if EDS is going from being underdiagnosed to over diagnosed. I was misdiagnosed for years as no one put all the weird and wonderful things I had going on together. I was diagnosed just after the criteria changed in 2017 and it was an all day job at The hospital.

@Lw87 sorry I've derailed your thread with my experiences. It wasn't my intention.

@me4real I'm off to try rest soon too. My PMs are open. I'll try and remember to reply! I'd I don't, I may have forgotten or my device has gone south (it's very old!)

@Tuesdayschildisfairofface I wonder if it's down to it being in more journals etc but it's often written up WRONGLY and then assumptions are made. I had both knees subluxed despite telling the clinician I had the condition, he just said "yeh yeh" and then grabbed my ankles to move my hips causing a huge amount of pain (I've no cartridge left in my knees and they need replacing) he didn't believe he hurt me until I showed him knees gradually going purple and swelling.

I don't know what the new criteria is I must admit, I was diagnosed by Prof Grahame before he retired. I know my "score" was almost double the maximum and he was "impressed"!

hEDS is the commonest, "mildest" EDS on average but still has strict criteria some of which can not be faked. (The bendiness, those little bumps on the side of your feet, the stretchy skin as opposed to reported pain)

It is very sensitive to progesterone... DD got a lot worse before puberty. I got worse during menopause but have improved a bit again.

Not Munchausens, no - but I have known several hypochondriacs.

And then there's the people like my mum, who always had a cold worse than anyone else (Flu), or pretty much anything worse than anyone else EVAH. (Until she was actually seriously ill, then she'd downplay it).

@Tuesdayschildisfairofface I would say EDS is being far less diagnosed. In my area the lead paediatric rheumatologist is very anti EDS/hypermobility. @Becca19962014 it’s interesting you mention Professor Potson because the same doctor wrote an article for the BMJ criticising him. I have 2 friends who asked for second opinions from GOSH and both children got diagnosed with hyper mobility syndrome.

@BlackeyedSusan I thiink maybe the people are being told they have hypermobility and then pronouncing themselves to have EDS. Or maybe they've just read stuff online.

Weird, I had no idea that EDS was a favorite of illness fakers! I know only one person with this, and she is most definitely ill for real. I'm sorry to think that she and other EDS patients may come under suspicion because a few people use the illness for attention-seeking purposes.

I think a more interesting question might be, "who on Mumsnet knows a man with Munchausens [by proxy]?" Pretty much every account here has described a woman. I know a couple of women who seem a bit "borderline" in their quest for imaginary health problems, but it seems to be much rarer in men.

I know a girl whose family suspect she has munchausens by proxy. She has six children and she's diagnosed ALL of them, and herself, with several conditions.

It affects the children badly (my good friend is the stepmother of the oldest child), it's very damaging to their mental health, and my friend and her DH are really worried about it the children's physical health.

SS don't seem interested.

Sorry, should say "woman" not girl.

I suspect my mother in law has it. Countless stomach operations and addiction to pain medication. Miraculously has stayed out of hospital since FIL passed away a few years ago. How any health professional has never properly investigated I’ll never know.

A friend of mine was hinted at by doctors that she might get labelled as having Munchausen's by Proxy (she was a new mum and also a nurse, and I think nurses can develop some anxieties around illness etc.)

@me4real it's more because a nurse has the medical knowledge and knows exactly what to say to get a diagnosis rather than having anxiety around illness. I would say the opposite of what you have said regarding nurses having anxieties around health, they (and other HCPs) actually tend to be very pragmatic and no nonsense around illness did to their knowledge and background.

My mil was officially diagnosed with munchausens

@QOD

My mil was officially diagnosed with munchausens

Curious to know how they officially diagnosed it?

My mum was a nurse for decades, and is either a hypochondriac or has munchausens, still not sure which.

She's almost 80 and still going strong but my childhood (like a pp) was full of hospital visits and her "illnesses". The only times she seemed really loving and at ease were when we were sick. I'm prone to health anxiety and am fairly sure the two are related.

Yes, a patient presented to hospital and was admitted to my ward with hair loss, mouth ulcers, vomiting and diarrhoea etc. Her initial blood counts were all off and indicated that she had some sort of cancer. Further testing revealed that she had been taking huge volumes of methotrexate tablets each day, a type of chemo drug given in low doses for inflammatory bowel diseases. Apparently her mother and a brother suffered with Ulcerative Colitis and the theory was that she had taken their medication or obtained it illegally.
It was very hush hush in the hospital and her consultants teleconferenced with various labs in the US just to confirm that there was no other possible explanation. In the end the patient self discharged, presumably because she knew we were on to her. She was the mother of two young children and also suffered from PTSD from her time as a frontline emergency worker. Our Nurse Unit Manager refused to refer to child safety because she said the children were not at risk and also lived with their father. I still feel extremely uncomfortable about this. The father of her children appeared supportive and genuinely believed she was physically sick. He wasn’t able to protect the children in my opinion.

I know someone who has chronic fatigue. She fought very hard for her diagnosis and saw many different doctors to get a diagnosis.

I don’t know if it’s factitious or not, but she definitely has mental health challenges. She is extremely overweight and I imagine this causes her to feel tired and lethargic too. I don’t think life is easy for her at all and I try to be empathetic towards her. It is difficult though, because her problems are all she wants to talk about and she won’t try anything that might improve her health. She has spiralled over the last few years from having lots of absences from work to now being almost completely house bound. She is only early thirties and it seems so sad.

Most frustratingly, if there is something she would like to do, she is well enough to manage. If she doesn’t want to do something, she will have a ‘flair up’. Again, I can totally see that this could be caused by her mental health challenges and I do try to understand, but I do find it challenging.

In 20 years as a primary school teacher, I've come across one mother we suspected of fabricating health problems in her child. She was generally a parent who thought her children were there to meet her needs not the other way around. She had older children from a previous relationship who were with their father that she didn't see. She told some very 'paranoid' stories about her ex and why she couldn't see the older children.

I know someone I believe has munchhausens.
She asked questions constantly about my mental health and autism then a few days later she'd have the same symptoms and traits. She has now lost custody of all of her children as SS don't feel she's fit to look after them as she began fabricating things about them. She even claimed her daughters had been sexualy abused by her partner but the children denied it and she stayed with the man she claimed abused them....

@Tuesdayschildisfairofface

SudokuWillNotSaveYou. I totally agree with what you say about Munchausens By Internet. I have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and after I was diagnosed looked online for info. I came across so many channels by young women (mainly in the US) who had just about every possible effect of EDS that it’s possible to have. They had braces on every limb and digit, huge neck braces, nasogastric tubes, catheters, rounds of surgeries and often had loads of piercings, tattoos and blue/green/pink hair. It was just so weird. I’ve been in so many outpatient clinics over the years and have rarely seen anyone in RL with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome in this state. Yes some are in wheelchairs and have a brace or too, but I’ve only seen a handful of people who have feeding tubes over the years. I know there’s different severities of the condition but they all seem to have the worst form of the type that can’t be tested for and a lot don’t even appear to have a proper diagnosis. It looks very performative and attention seeking. Most have gastroparisis, POTS. I think a lot of them have MH issues rather than EDS.

Yes! It is a mental illness though. I think it must be tied up with learned helplesness. One young woman who was one of these internet 'chronic illness' celebrities actually ended up dying due to complications with a feeding tube! I find it really hard to get my head around as having being institutionalized for anorexia in the past, I absolutely hate medical settings and am desperate to get out of hospital and back in control of my life every single time I've been sick. I absolutely detest the feeling of being a 'patient'. But just because I can't understand it I still accept its a mental illness.

What did you think of Gypsy Rose's sentence OP? I found myself agreeing with her - she probably should have done some prison time, but 10 years seems harsh, all things considered. I seriously doubt she's a danger to society.

I had a patient who presented as having a serious condition across multiple hospitals, even accepting treatment which could have been life threatening given that he was actually healthy. He is the only person I worked with who knowingly presented incorrectly. I worked with a number of patients who had trauma in the past and it was presenting as a physical condition (e.g. stroke symptoms but hadn't had a stroke).

I also knew somebody personally who pretended to have cancer (even lying to her husband and young children) and was only found out when a friend happened to be at the hospital at the time she'd said she'd been in for treatment and discovered she wasn't there. So sad.

@owlbethere

I think the thing to remember about people with factitious disorder is they ARE unwell, just not with the things they fake, it’s a psychological problem. As a child I used to fake illnesses or pretend illnesses were worse than they were because it was the only time I got my mothers attention. I stopped when I was in my teens because it wasnt really working anymore and took up ED and self harm instead. I was a very lonely sad neglected child and only years of therapy have helped.

Oh “Owl” that is sad - you are brave to have thought about this and moved forward .💐

I was sitting in a multidisciplinary meeting discussing my severely disabled son’s failure to thrive and chronic vomiting problem. Suddenly the penny dropped and I whispered to the social worker sitting next to me ‘they think it’s me don’t they?’ She did not answer but her face confirmed my suspicion. The problem was that the school staff maintained that he did not vomit so much during the school day whilst I maintained there were frequent episodes at home. It was solved by me asking the Clinical commissioning Group to pay for 14 nights sleep overs at the school with video recording and 24/7 monitoring. The results confirmed everything I was saying.
I don’t hold anything against the professionals, these children are very vulnerable and every single possible explanation has to be considered

One of the children at our adoption group was subjected to FII, luckily the birth parent was caught interfering during a hospital stay, the level of FII was very dangerous and the ‘interfering’ in hopsital could have led to the child suffering permanent damage or losing their life.

I know someone who had there child taken away for so called making up she had a condition and treating her like she had the condition. I’m still unsure if she was lying or not and I often think about the poor child 😢.

My DD has suspected HEDS but doctors just fob us off, she has most of the symptoms but doctors say it’s normal for her to have these due to other conditions 😬. She’s in pain a lot of the time and now self medicated with CBD (she’s almost 18), she will likely end up in a wheelchair when she’s older.

I know someone who went through a period of it. It wasn't too extreme and she was going through a rough time. I think her anxiety just manifested that way. Eventually something in her home life that was brewing kicked off in a big way and ever since she's stopped it. I wonder if she knew something was wrong on an instinctual level and she directed the anxiety towards her kids health.