Munchausen's Syndrome: Stranger (and More Dangerous) Than Fiction
Note: Actually it's a bullshit disorder. I post only so that you will know what's being said.
Many moons ago, when I was an intern in Boston, I was assigned to do a history and physical on a teenager. She had been hospitalized multiple times for recurrent kidney infections that had spread to her blood stream and nobody could figure out why, so the kidneys were removed as they were chronically infected, and now she was dialysis dependent. She also continued to have mysterious outbreaks of bacteria in her bloodstream. The puzzle had been solved by an astute physician, who found a syringe filled with cloudy fluid that contained the bacteria that she had been infected with in her room. It turned out that the patient's mother, with the patient's knowledge, had been injecting her with the bacteria. This was my introduction to Munchausen's syndrome.
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