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?

@Sunshinebuttercups ah that makes sense! I did a google for that name and nothing came up. Amazing what our autocorrect changes things to isn't it!?! I was sent to see another there who immediately referred me. He has no problems with talking, believe me, I spent five hours with him explaining EDS to me, all I really remember is "things get worse after 40" and "do as much as you can now"!

He was one of the ones who first identified it I think and that can lead to all sorts of issues. I know I was told it was too easy to be diagnosed by one Dr and then showed them all the directions my knees went in (having finally after decades been told that knees are not supposed to do that!!). Always freaked em out! I can't anymore as it causes so much pain.

There was a parent we suspected as having M by Proxy when DS was at Primary school. She was constantly taking her DCs to the GP but in particular the younger child seemed to have constant doctor/hospital appointments. The parent liked nothing better than to talk about her DCs health 'problems' to anyone who would listen. If anyone else's child got ill then lo and behold her DC would end up in hospital because they'd got it worse! She used to make a bee line for me as my DD had multiple (genuine) health conditions so she clearly thought I'd be happy to listen to her droning on. Her child apparently had a severe nut allergy but was seen at a sports club eating a snickers bar with no ill effects. The poor kid was on crutches at least 3 times in a school year for some sort of 'injury' but would recover very quickly to play sport at the local club. As far as everyone could see at school he was a perfectly healthy child except when his DM was around!

@Wroxie those conditions do get diagnosed together. That's the point.

I don't have adhd or a formal autism diagnosis but do have the others, all caused by EDS. So be careful with your assumptions, you may believe you know she is making things up you DO NOT know others are.

Sorry. * you do not know.

@FrankieDobie

One of the parents at my kids primary school years ago - she used to bring her daughter into school in a wheelchair and watch as the staff got the ramp out etc and took her in. One day at pick up time the little girl walked out of the school with the other kids. A few of the parents were visibly shocked and the mum herself looked mortified and went marching to the teacher to ask why her daughter was walking around. The teacher told her “‘Sarah said she doesn’t really need a wheelchair”. Same parent told everyone that her son had multiple life threatening allergies - one of which was peanuts. The school put everything in place to protect him including checking all children’s packed lunches and making kids wash their hands on the way into school. One day I saw them in town and he was eating a packet of peanut M&Ms. When she saw me she literally batted them out of his hand. He looked so shocked and confused.

The thing with the peanut m&m's made me remember a woman I used to work with who said she was allergic to chocolate. She talked about it CONSTANTLY and even asked that the vending machine be made "chocolate-free" to avoid cross contamination- they actually did on the machine on our floor, but not the others in the building. She put signs up in the kitchen about it - "Please be careful with CHOCOLATE products including hot chocolate packets as there is a member of staff with a serious allergy". Anyway, one day I went to the IT storage room for something and she was standing in there stuffing her face with Celebrations. There was a little pile of wrappers on the table next to her. I will never forget the look on her face... it was like I'd caught her looking at porn or something. She never spoke to me or looked at me again! She must have been so scared that I would call her out on it.

I strongly suspect a woman I know has harmed one of her children through exaggerating a genuine, but mild condition of theirs. They have had multiple invasive and life changing surgeries, probably for fabricated reasons.

I know some professionals involved with the family who have tried to intervene but the mum has made blatantly false accusations against them as soon as they stand up to her claims. She has also moved the child from school to school and hospital to hospital.

It's awful for the whole family. Obviously for the child involved but also the other siblings who don't get any attention.

Maybe she knew she had a chocolate addiction, and was trying to avoid temptation. But how insulting to people with real allergies!

Every ward i have worked in has had people who present regularly and are well known to consultants. I know of one where there is a management plan in place to try and reduce time spent in hospital as sadly they like to harm themselves in a clinical setting. Its very complex as it is usually such a long term thing and interventions that have been put in place to appease them quickly to get home have massive ramifications for years to come. What they are presenting with often does require admission but often self inflicted. I'm really heartbroken for them that that is their whole life but honestly its quite draining and they can be incredibly manipulative at times. I have seen people use relationships they have built up with more senior staff to undermine confidence with newer staff.

I have only come across one case where the parent/guardian was accussed of fabricating illness in a child. Currently on trial. I am not in paeds so I wouldn't see a lot. Desperately sad and complicated individual but what a sad life changing outcome for thr poor child.

As a primary teacher I've come across two suspected cases of FII (essentially M by Proxy) but as PPs have said it is immensely difficult to prove.

Child A will now be on aged 10 and was on her seventh school when she and her younger siblings were withdrawn to be homeschooled, because of various safeguarding referrals.

Child K has moved to secondary this year, and they have already been in contact with us, his primary, numerous times to share safeguarding information.

What I think hasn't helped is the wide availability of information online; both parents in this instance were able to get referrals via GPs by listing symptoms that they had found on the internet - though these of course did not get further than the paediatricians to which they were referred. We're lucky in that both of these instances 'only' concerned parents being convinced that their children had behavioural/developmental disorders, so there wasn't the worry of them being unnecessarily medicated.

It's so easy to pathologies everything about your baby/toddler/child by looking online, so I can see how people who are predisposed to worrying could spiral.

Yes both munchausens and by proxy. Always something wrong with her that no medical team could find, always something up with her kids, constanly posting online for praise and sympathy about being 'so strong and brave' 'such a good mum' etc. When all the time she had a neglect and abuse order from social services. Her poor kids. One chose to live elsewhere as soon as they were old enough. A thoroughly devious and unpleasant individual who I spend many years trying to help until I realised I was being a mug. However I do believe she had a bad upbringing and that her mother had munchausens-- at least that is what she told me.

Yes I know a parent that I have always suspected of By proxy.
Kids were on all sorts of pills for medical issues but it's the autism stuff and mental impairment she try's to focus on while pushing achievements weirdly.

She scares me- confronting her could cause me problems in both work and personal life.
She has ingratiated herself in my community.
The wheels are coming off and that's the most dangerous time for everyone in her sphere.

@DappyApple I obviously don't know the people involved, but this scenario can sometimes be because of how people either misunderstand common health issues or exaggerate them. For example, I knew a couple where the woman supposedly had cancer a number of times. She actually had abnormal smears with pre-cancerous cells, that were treated each time. So they were treated, and the "cancer" was never mentioned again until she eventually had another abnormal smear.
Having a number of abnormal smears is worrying and I would understand her being anxious about it. But she did not have cancer. It may be a similar thing going on with the people you know.

I know someone who developed FII as a teenager after an appallingly neglectful and abusive early life. Things like falling out of trees on purpose, using epipens to provoke symptoms, tampering with injuries while in hospital to make them worse etc etc. Sadly they died before they were 30 of an accidental overdose which was probably something to do with their condition. It's so sad.

This sort of thing is rare. What we really need to be asking ourselves is, why women are less likely to be believed by doctors, and why women are more commonly dismissed by the NHS. Why it's mainly women with real medical conditions who spend years and years trying to get diagnosed, constantly accused of making things up. And then they finally get diagnosed years later but nobody ever apologises for having accused them of lying. There are mothers of genuinely ill children who've been threatened with social services, threatened to have their child taken away from them, only to have their child finally diagnosed a few years later, proved with blood tests and scans, and yet they never receive an apology, and still get labelled as "an anxious mother" even after their child is officially diagnosed.

Not all of these are even rare medical conditions. Even PCOS, which is more common than doctors would like to have us believe, typically takes, what, seven years or something to be diagnosed? And all that time, women are accused of overexaggerating, accused of attention seeking, being told it's just normal period pain etc. Even though a lot of them end up having operations in the end.

Ehlers-Danlos is very often co-morbid with POTS and other things. This is a noted fact. And there's thirteen different types of Ehlers-Danlos, so even if someone has different symptoms from you, it doesn't mean they're making it up, it means they have a different type.

It's also widely noted that autoimmune conditions in general tend to be co-morbid. So once you have one autoimmune condition, you're more likely to get another one. And yet women people are accused of making it up, being told they can't possibly have all those illnesses together.

There are endless stories of people with rare or widely-underdiagnosed conditions who spend years and years begging doctors for help, years being ignored and accused of all sorts. Many of these women people end up spending a lot of money on private healthcare, even getting into debt, because the NHS won't listen or doesn't treat people holistically.

And a lot of "rare" medical conditions aren't nearly as rare as we think, just rarely diagnosed because people with those conditions are so often ignored or turned away.

This sort of thing is rare

but also

And a lot of "rare" medical conditions aren't nearly as rare as we think

your logic applies to Munchausens also

Yeah yeah I know. I realised after submitting it.

But I'd still say that actual munchausen's is much rarer than "rare diseases" and certainly much rarer than underdiagnosis of real diseases, and accusations levelled at genuine people who are actually ill. This is the real problem, turning real patients away and accusing them of making it up.

I have long suspected an extended family member of this, but I have no proof so I keep mny mouth shut. Thankfully the kids have grown up to be pretty healthy and now they're out of her care she focuses on her own health issues. But there's no way I'll ever be able to prove it so I just let her crack on.

Separately, I have friend who has been accused of making her illness up because she has chronic pain that appears to have no physical cause. I don't think anyone has suggested she's actively making herself ill, but she's had plenty of doctors and others say that there's nothing really wrong with her/she's just imagining it. She's lost jobs over it.

By the way, I was talking to someone recently who was the victim of what you could call the reverse of MBP - a parent not doing anything about a serious condition (in this case asthma) until a very serious emergency happened.That can be harmful too.

@allergyupset don't make the mistake of thinking the accusations stop just because someone is diagnosed, they don't. I've had medical professionals so convinced I must be fine they've argued with my specialist and left me without food and water for hours as a diabetic that's life threatening, no, they didn't believe me about the diabetes either.

Eventually my specialist team stopped seeing me. It just wasn't worth it. The local Drs refused to accept they were wrong. Simply wouldn't have it.

Munchausen's syndrome is a psychological disorder where someone pretends to be ill or deliberately produces symptoms of illness in themselves. Their main intention is to assume the "sick role" so that people care for them and they are the centre of attention.

It is estimated around 1% of the population suffer with it

Health anxiety (sometimes called hypochondria) is when you spend so much time worrying you're ill, or about getting ill, that it starts to take over your life.

Around 4-5% of people are thought to suffer with this.

It is far more likely that what you are seeing is some poor bugger absolutely at there wits end worrying that they themselves or their loved ones are dying of some horrible illness, hence the scans and tests etc.

I completely agree allergyupset
I was referred on the 2WW to gynecology. No cancer so that was brilliant. The gynecologist was shocked at how low my medication for thyroid was given my levels, and felt this was significant with the mid cycle bleeding etc. She was going to raise with my GP. I had a follow up appt and the Gynae had completely changed her stance, said she'd leave it to my GP, said it was probably just hormones and suggested I have the mirena fitted. I declined and she was really pushy about it, offering to do it there and then!

I can only imagine there must be something either said by the GPs or on my notes to account for this turnaround. I am definitely under-medicated as my GP surgery ignores the actual NICE guidelines!

I only contact my GP for repeat prescriptions and tell them everything is fine at medication reviews even though I'm struggling with a few things.

[quote Becca19962014]@allergyupset don't make the mistake of thinking the accusations stop just because someone is diagnosed, they don't. I've had medical professionals so convinced I must be fine they've argued with my specialist and left me without food and water for hours as a diabetic that's life threatening, no, they didn't believe me about the diabetes either.

Eventually my specialist team stopped seeing me. It just wasn't worth it. The local Drs refused to accept they were wrong. Simply wouldn't have it.[/quote]
Yep, I'm particularly worried about this.

The book ‘A Boy Called It’ is a really eye opener. I’d highly recommend it. There are sequels too.

About a poor boy who’s mother fabricated his illnesses. He tried so hard to get help and to make people aware in the end.

I thought there was a question mark over the truthfulness of the author of a Boy Called It?

Yes I have come across both . They tend to be lonely people who don't get any attention so they enjoy all the medical attention and get a feeling of importance from it .