Testimonies: Faking illness

Almost everyone I know has lied at one point or another to get out of going to school, work, or some other dreaded place. Some lie because they didn’t do their homework. Others lie because they just want to stay in bed in sleep. And some even just need time to decompress from their busy lives. I still haven’t figured out why I did. That I don’t know scares me.

When I was a freshman in college, I faked extreme abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and a variety of other symptoms that eventually ended in having my appendix removed. My parents were on a tropical island at the time and had to fly back in a hurry because they were worried about me. My grandmother, who had several surgeries on her back, ended up sleeping on a ceramic tile floor at my hospital bedside. When it was all said and done, I was to afraid to tell anyone the truth. So, instead, when I got home and was sick on the pain medicine prescribed to me to help with the post surgery pain, I said I was in excruciating pain and was rushed back to the hospital. The thing is, I wasn’t in pain. This was only the beginning.

Morphine. They had be on a morphine pump. I had convinced everyone around me that I was so sick that I needed morphine to relieve my pain. I had starved myself and had lost over forty pounds, weighing in at eighty-three pounds and my skinniest. I was allowing myself to go to near the brink of death for a lie. Doctors finally came to the conclusion that it was in my head, which it was, but were wrong in thinking that i didn’t know it was just in my head. I had my mother and everyone else who loved me convinced I was really sick. So we went home on depression medicine and waited till my “symptoms” flared again. Which of course they did.

Scars. I ended up with four scars from my gallbladder removed. I had convinced a well known surgeon that it might be my gallbladder causing all this turmoil on my body. So I had my gallbladder removed. For a short while I acted like I was feeling much better. I even went back to college for a whole semester. Unfortunately, all the procedures and medications had done the job of truly making me sick now. I was either extremely constipated or glued to the toilet on any given day. I was plagued with horrible migraines from the pain killer addiction I had ended up with from being on prescription narcotics for so long. My abdomen really did hurt all the time from all the scar tissue that I had from my two surgeries.

Did I get control? My mom convinced me that I should go into nursing. That all my experiences would make me a compassionate and caring medical professional. So I decided to try being a Nurse Assistant at a local hospital. I ended up being assigned to the oncology/medical floor. This is where I realized that all my fake and new, real, medical problems were nothing compared to what the people I was caring for were facing. I stopped everything I decided to enjoy life.

I made friends with the people I worked with. One of these people set me up on a blind date with my now husband. I have a beautiful little girl, two dogs, the house of my dreams, and a loving family. But, I still have yet to tell anyone I love or care about the truth. But, I haven’t had a fake medical issue in over 6 years. I keep wondering if this “stage” in my life could really be over.

Will this haunt me forever?

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