Dealing with a malingering who fake trying to avoid legal troubles

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What can you do if you think someone is just a malingering fake trying to avoid legal troubles? She keeps going to the hospital, and they treat whatever symptoms she presents with and release her. She is addicted to pain medication and is on so much of this.

I looked up munchausen’s yesterday because I thought maybe this could explain it, but she is doing this, I believe, to avoid having to face charges that she will eventually have to face.

I did not suspect her of being a malingerer until I caught her lying about other, unimportant things. What is worse, I think she is hurting herself in order to get medical treatment, and she has young children.

I would not ask this but I am worried about the kids

Usually she has seizures, but she also has chest pain, abdominal pain, nausea, diarhhea, trouble swallowing, weakness, dizziness, loss of vision, fainting, shoulder pain, back pain, leg pain, migrains.

She hangs out at work with me or at my house because she is trying to avoid being served for a couple of lawsuits since she owes people a lot of money. She also has 2 criminal trials. I imagine this is stressful. A few times she has told the emt’s fibs though to exagerate her symptoms when I have been with her all day.

I am getting good a being able to predict when she will have an episode now, too. She really needs to be in the hospital tomorrow so she can miss her hearing, so since they released her this morning from her trip last night, she will have an episode again today. She will not have it at my house this time, she will have an errand to do on another side of town closer to a hospital she has not been to like she did yesterday.

I realize I have no knowledge to diagnose her and she cannot be properly treated at the hospital because she tries to go to different hospitals when she can. She is seeing cardiologists, neurologists, gastroenterologists, and some of the doctors she sees are well respected. When the tests come back and don’t support her symptoms, she does not go back.

She has been taken by ambulance 39 times this year, and most of the paramedics know her so try to get her back to the same hospital now. This has enabled her to feel better a bit sooner, usually before they get her to the ambulance. This is a recent development. So now, she had a seizure somewhere else so they had to take her to a different hospital.

How can they diagnose any of the diseases so that she can quit avoiding her court dates?

Answer
Malingering is a symptom. There are actual diseases that can cause people to be mislabeled as malingering, such as: Multiple sclerosis, ALS, Lupus, Lyme disease, Malaria, Babesiosis, Cat Scratch Disease, Heavy metal toxicity, Fluorosis, Gulf War Syndrome, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Nephritis, Syphilis, many types of Cancer, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, and many other chronic disease that affect the endocrine system.

What you can do is realize that you are not experienced enough to diagnose your friend, and be more supportive toward her.

Also, realize that hospitals never get to the root cause of chronic diseases – it’s really out side of their bailiwick.

Unfortunately there are separate tests for every disease. Some disease require blood to test for antibodies, some are tested by antigens, some are tested by proteins in the urine.

If only someone could invent a medical tricorder like Dr. McCoy has on Star Trek, then every disease could be tested for at once.