🚨 My favorite munchie has entered Find Out territory 🚨

One of my favorite pastimes is following people with munchausens by internet. I started on a now defunct blog called https://www.warriorelihoax.com/ after cancer faker Belle Gibson's 60 Minutes Australia car crash interview (it's very funny, posted it here a few years ago).

Reddit has a few groups such as /r/illnessfakers who follow munchies and snark. Most have borderline fake diseases like hypermobile Ehlers Danlos, POTS (fast heartbeat upon standing), fibromyalgia, etc. These are real and sometimes serious diseases but either not a huge deal (need to sit in the shower) or easy to fake in their mild forms. They are popular on TikTok with sickfluencers leading to real butt doctors seeing tons of them in their practices/ERs. These diseases come with central lines for fluids, obvious aid devices like wheel chairs and lots of butt-patting from people who don't realize it's not deadly cancer. Many of them started with eating disorders and move over to claiming things like gastroparesis (slow digestion sometimes necessitating feeding tubes and as a last resort TPN which is nutrition directly injected into the veins). TPN is dangerous and hard on the liver and many people die of it. It's a real last resort for people who can't eat.

Those groups are especially funny because a huge number of the commenters have their own fake illnesses and are mad about the stolen valor.

It's kind of sad because like once or twice a year one of the subjects will die of self-induced sepsis or similar by infecting their central lines—injecting 💩 directly into their blood stream but it's ultimately FAFO.

My favorite munchies are the really inept ones who suck at fooling both doctors and the general public.

Meet Dani Marina, a 38 year old teenager.

Dani once had a very severe eating disorder and then moved on to claiming gastroparesis. See this timeline for a very long overview.

Dani was on TPN for 3 years but kept infecting her central line and ultimately it was pulled and not replaced. She actually almost died of sepsis!

She claims she cannot tolerate tube feeds and needs a new central line. She says absolutely cannot eat yet shows a full fridge on her lives.

She has one port for liquids but it's in her femoral artery so not visible and not able to be used for TPN (she cannot access it herself at home and thus cannot frick with it to give herself sepsis). She actually got this port behind her GI doc's back by going to a hematologist oncologist who didn't know her history. When he found out, he was apparently pissed.

She also has a fake boyfriend that commmenters refer to as "George Glass".

She has been trying to get a new SVC port (little injectable thing on your upper chest—I had one when I had cancer, they're great if you're getting lots of injections and blood draws) so she can go back on TPN despite her doctors saying she will NEVER be prescribed it again due to her munching. Right now her SVC (major vein) is too scarred but the Mayo Clinic has a vascular center that can repair it. She self-referred there and has a couple of appointments in early August.

The major academic medical centers near her (Penn and Temple) have written in her chart that she has fictitious disorder. Some or all of these records will be sent to Mayo for review prior to her visit.

This b-word has been packing for literally over a month.

Well, her local GI apparently got wind of her trip to Mayo and read her the riot act. She had a meeting with 9 (!!) people the other week who laid down the law and stopped prescribing her fluids. They told her to see psych or find a new GI. She is going the new doc route.

Mayo won't give her TPN and possibly won't do the procedure if her docs at home aren't on board. She got a one way ticket hoping she will have to stay in Rochester, MN but none of us munchie cyberbullies know exactly what will happen. 🍿

Finally, see her GoFund Me for her trip which was featured on ChoosingBeggars. It raised like $12 and she shut it down.