From: llama@tramp.cc.utexas.edu (sine nomine)
Newsgroups: sci.med
Subject: a strange question
Date: 24 Dec 92 20:27:01 GMT
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5


for reasons i'd rather not go into, i'm trying to figure out the
plausibility of someone's claim to be ill. i'd appreciate any comments
anyone has on the situation.

some background: the person in question is female, caucasian,
middle-class. she was 39 when the claims of illness began, in 1974. at
the time, she was functioning fairly normally in society, holding down
a job and supporting herself. she drank fairly steadily (consuming
probably two cases of beer and a few bottles of wine every week)
during the entire time she claimed to be ill.  about the time the
complaints of illness started, she married a widower with four
children whose wife had died of pneumonia as a complication of
leukemia three years previously. one of the children had epilepsy (he
died of it in 1987), one had moderate emotional problems including
bedwetting, and the other two were fairly normal.  

the woman in question was convinced that the neighbors were out to get
her and dealt with this by having a series of unlisted phone numbers;
eventually the numbers were not given out to even the immediate
family. she was prone to fits of rage marked by screaming and physical
violence, but after these fits she seemed not to be aware of the
damage she'd caused (she once gave one of her stepchildren a black eye
and later asked the child how the injury had happened). she reacted
with extreme violence to challenges to her veracity in any situation.
the children were abused, though on more than one occasion when
neighbors (concerned by bruises they'd seen and screams they'd heard)
called the police, they denied that anything was wrong and asked not
to be taken from their parents.

this woman's main medical claim was that she was suffering from
leukemia and being treated by a military hospital for the same. in
support of that, she pointed to symptoms she said were caused by
chemotherapy: severe morning nausea and vomiting of blood, a distended
abdomen, a continually flushed face, and general fatigue. she never
evidenced any hair loss, which made these stories of chemo and
radiation therapy suspect to me. she also had access to what seemed a
wide range of prescription medications, including valium, other
tranquilizers, anti-inflammatories, and something that had antabuse
properties (but seemed relatively nontoxic the time she dosed one of
her stepchildren with it to make a point about drinking -- when she
forced the child (a 14 year-old) to drink beer after taking the
medication, the only ill effects were of the expected antabuse-type).
she claimed that the drug which produced teh antabuse effects was an
anti-leukemic.

she died in august of 1992, 18 years after the initial diagnosis of
leukemia was supposedly made. what i'm wondering here is if the
symptoms and behaviors reported above and the length of time she
survived after diagnosis are consistent with this disease. if not, is
there a disease that would cause such symptoms and that could be
survived for 18 years? i'm not entirely certain, as i don't have
access to the relevant documents yet, but the implication at her death
was that she died of an alcohol-related illness.

any feedback would be appreciated. thanks.

--
sine nomine | deb martinson
what's red and invisible?
no tomatoes.
Newsgroups: sci.med