Life expectancy sent by email - relative

[BillStickersIsInnocent]

Hi, I hope someone can help.

I’m really shocked by this communication but I could well be missing something. A relative received an email after a CT scan saying he had inoperable lung cancer and giving him 2 years to live. 2 weeks later another email saying his scan had been sent to another clinician who has concluded he has 8 months to live.
This feels so cruel, I would have thought these conversations happen face to face or at least over the phone where you can ask questions.
Does anyone else have any experience of this type of communication?

Well done to you for relieving the parents of the stress of believing they would be nursing their son through terminal cancer at their stage of life.

@Ooolaaaala father has said he doesn’t believe son is capable of writing the emails, but to say that I guess he must have considered it a possibility.

Seems like they all want to save face including the DF - lots of collusion and denial going on…..

I wish they’d just call the hospital to find out the truth
But the son can't call the hospital - as they'd look up his record and tell him he isn't being treated there. Remember, there is no fact, there is only fiction.

However, son could maybe look at these 'emails' (I still think they are screenshots and not real emails at all) and perhaps discover the email addresses are fakes - you know the kind of thing scammers use that superficially look like they've come from a delivery company or something. And then he can 'have a call with the hospital' privately, where hopefully he will discover his 'tests' show he has the all clear. The parents will want to raise a complaint with the hospital - since presumably the idea is they have leaked his email address to a scammer - but the son will want to just put it behind himself and move on.

@Ooolaaaala yes I believe so, they’ve responded like this before.

@tribpot absolutely. I’m just thinking wouldn’t it be great if the father said ‘let’s call the hospital to ask them about this’. Unless he has done this and the son has said no…which would raise suspicions in itself. But father has decided to work through these emails with the son to try and work out what is fake, with no frame of reference other than the son’s account. The whole thing is bizarre but it’s probably explained by Ooolaaaala’s comment about saving face.

Yes, it's quite a lot to accuse someone you live with and have to see every day of outright lying about a terminal condition. Easier for everyone to pretend it was just some terrible mix-up or third party scam. Unfortunately all this will do is incentivise the son to try harder on his next con.

If father and son are now colluding in accepting that it may be a scam, then the game's up really. It's one thing to fall for scam emails that look as though they might be genuine, but beyond implausible that you would forget you hadn't actually had any of the diagnostic imaging the scam emails refer to. The son doesn't seem like the sharpest knife in the drawer tbh. Fortunately it sounds as though his dad is awake now though. I think you handled it all pretty well, OP.

Actually, as much as my Internet self would love to see some drama, in real life I think this is a good resolution. OP has taken decisive but diplomatic action.No more tearjerking cancer drama. Father saves face but is more skeptical of son from now on. No shit ends up hitting the fan, OP still on good terms with elderly relatives.

I think the question now is how the parents press ahead with their plans to move into other accommodation where the son can't leech off live with them. That was what precipitated the scam. If the parents are more clued up than they're willing to let on, they'll get a shift on with that quick smart, whilst the son is on the back foot from nearly being exposed, and before he has time to think of another con.

Father has just texted to say it hasn’t gone as planned. Son had deleted the emails but has now recovered them (!) but he was too angry and upset to go through them with the father.
Son claims that Macmillan nurses are visiting on Monday and they will pass the emails on to the nurses then to investigate.
Of course they won’t visit on Monday, and this just delays things further.
I’m not sure what to do now.

I think it's really important that you say nothing @BillStickersIsInnocent . Let this play out. The son is way too stupid to be able to make this lie stick.

Let the Macmillan nurses not visit on Monday and have the father draw his own conclusions.

I'd let it play out. It seems it's starting to unravel.

Thanks @tribpot you’re right. I’m just amazed at how the father is justifying this behaviour. If it was a scam as he believed, why on earth would the son be so upset about not actually dying in 8 months?!

I know I need to be patient now and wait for Monday to roll around.

Yes just wait it out.

Clearly the parents already had a blind spot where this person was concerned, to have housed him willingly after his previous crimes.

It sounds as if the supposed sequence of events now is that the son had already deleted the emails before the father raised the issue of their credibility? I mean who on earth would delete emails telling you you were dying?

I had a look back through your posts and the son said the emails came 'out of the blue' following a chest x-ray and CT. The Macmillan strand of the story is one that doesn't appear to have any documentation to support it - a referral has been made, is that stated in the email? But the appointments have supposedly been cancelled by phone, I assume.

So these are the elements of the story has to work with. If he now thinks the emails are fake, then is the same scammer who wrote the emails apparently pretending to be Macmillan on the phone? If I were him, I'd now try to make out this is a new type of scam, where so-called Macmillan send out emails with a dire prognosis and no treatment plan in it, and then get you to do a 'fund raiser' for them to bilk some cash out of your loved ones.

This still relies on believing that, following a clear chest X-ray and CT, the hospital makes no legitimate contact with the patient or their GP by letter.

However, just bide your time. The internal logic of the lie is falling apart.

Not getting at you op, but investigate what?

It can't be a scam by an outside party because this man would have had tests at a hospital in order to be diagnosed with cancer. He either had those tests or he didn't.

What does the father think they are investigating?

This whole situation is too weird.

Don’t do anything.

if the father is up to a bit of detective work then it ought to be possible to ring up the team who organised the scan (if it ever indeed happened) to find out what is going on/ clarify that the cancer emails are bogus.

@knittingaddict yes it is very weird.

The father doesn’t believe the son could write the emails so he is wanting to believe the scam idea, which to be fair, is the one I presented him with. I guess their thinking is that macmillan can take a look and see what is real and what isn’t. It’s hard to understand their reasoning when nothing is based in reality though.

It’s hard to understand their reasoning when nothing is based in reality though

Yes, it's a mind boggler if they really still believe that the son has had tests at the hospital and contact with Macmillan but the only information which confirms his diagnosis is fake. You would think it was a massive giveaway that the son wasn't immediately calling the hospital or his GP to find out what the real results of the scans were - but presumably he is pretending to believe the Macmillan nurse will be explaining all that on Monday. When the nurse doesn't arrive, that might be the time to suggest calling the hospital to "put everyone's mind at rest".

Father is now preparing a list of all the red flags points to share with the ‘macmillan visit’ on Monday. I think this is a good thing - hopefully when they are all written down something will click.

It’s hard to understand their reasoning when nothing is based in reality though

The alternative is to believe their son would lie about something like this, which would be very difficult to face I imagine. Especially as they've protected him as a sex offender, and that they rely on his help. They need to protect the alternative reality of their son being a decent person to preserve their own mental and physical health.

@Planesmistakenforstars yes I think you’re right.

Imagine if a random woman dressed up as a Macmillan nurse arrives lol

It honestly would be hilarious (but of course don't actually do this @BillStickersIsInnocent ) to get one of your friends the son doesn't know to show up on Monday and introduce themselves as a Macmillan nurse, just to see the terror in his eyes. I suspect he would then fake a heart attack.

Ha that made me laugh! Which is very welcome at the moment