How to deal with sister's 'illnesses'

[soveryfedup]

hey ladies, I hope you can help me at all.

My sister has been 'ill' with different illness for most of her teenage and adult life. She was finally diagnosed with lupus and has been in and out of hospital with it for about 10 years. She is 28, has never worked, never lived away from the family flat (my mum lives in the family house down the road), never travelled...

My concern is that she is making up her illnesses, or in some way making herself ill for attention. She used to steal and lie as a child for attention, then graduated to breaking bones and finally my mum found out she had actually bought a plaster kit off the internet and plastered her leg up from toe to hip and told us all she broke it. I only found this out years after the event and my mum didn't even know at that time or how long she had been doing it. How she pulls all this off I do not know, but her medical knowledge is vast. She even pretended to break something else and went all the way to a and e with my mum before she started questioning her - sister was 'convinced' she had broken something but really, she hadn't. it was like she thought she could fool the x ray or something.

Whenever my mum leaves the country she gets a lupus attack and ends up in hospital on ICU then in a ward, usually with some form of random infection. She is ill, she has temps, operations to find the cause, morphine for pain... the hospital have secretly sent in a psych to see her and he thought she was mentally ill but can't section her on no evidence or real harm and she can only have counselling if she seeks it. The drs now try to be abrupt with her and make being in hospital as boring as possible so she 'gets well' and leaves. She complains and tells them what to do. My mum doesn't hardly visit her any more in hospital and knows it is all bollox, my brother never does (he is very affected by this, poor thing), I live on the other side of the country and have a toddler (thankfully) so don't visit either. I text every day. when i am ill she is always more ill which is so annoying and weird.

She also manipulates us with her lies saying so and so didn't visit her when they did, or that nurses and drs were maltreating her when they weren't, or that she was in ICU when she wasn't.

I can't talk to her about it, if I accused her of making up all this she would say I am evil and never talk to me again :( I just want her to be well, what can i do? Shall i carry on ignoring it? Support her in her 'illness' even though she is playing me for a fool? Has anyone any experience of anything like this?

Sorry it is so long and thank you so much for reading. 15-20 years of this is hard to paraphrase! thanks again.

It sounds like you've got some ideas on how to move forwards - I hope it goes well.
If you are interested in finding out more about Lupus - Lupus UK have an excellent website www.lupusuk.org.uk which has lots of fact sheets to download here.

star, thank you. I did look at all the info when she was diagnosed about 8 years ago and it wasn't great, but the factsheet you have given me looks excellent and hope the website is better these days :) All the best pip.

You're welcome, I hope I didn't sound too harsh, it hit a nerve

For what it's worth whatever is happening with her I think you'll be ina much better place to support her if you feel comfortable with your relationship with her. Meaning only giving as much as you can, feeling forced to give too much will make you tired, drained, less resiliiant yourself and very understandably resentful. If you feel you need coucelling to help you understand how you feel about her and where and how to set your boundries then that's a really positive step to take. Like you've said the only person whose actions you can change are your own and that's bloody hard to accept.

it was a bit harsh trickle but I don't mind, I wouldn't spraff on about it on a forum if i didn't expect backlash of some kind . there is a whole world of my sister that I couldn't touch on here but generally, that I am the one with the problem is a fine diagnosis.

I can't give anything to her any more. Nothing. None of us can. She takes and takes and takes and it is completely exhausting. On top of being so attention seeking and needy she will take no responsibility for herself - for her housing, her benefits, her health (eats shite, reads nothing about lupus blardy bla) and is completely the opposite to me. This is probably the sticking point. She never asks after us, in fact in response to my recent miscarriage she sent pages of text about her being ill when, despite me asking, she hadn't mentioned it all week. It is like she is terrified if she doesn't have the illness to draw attention to herself she will vanish. I find it irritating that anyone can whine so much yet do nothing for themselves.

But i can't live her life for her, all I can do is bite my lip, send loving texts every day and gifts when she is ill and bitch about it all to DH. In the meantime I hope to come to terms with lupus and all it entails and try to remotely understand her life. She is probably depressed I know. And out of all this, she is lovely. I'm just tired of being her donkey and want her to seek help of some kind... but she won't so I carry her baggage round, being resentful and hating myself for being such a bitch. Bah.

Off now! thanks all.