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I’ve heard of Munchausens before but never by internet. For the past month I’ve been following the blog of a young girl with cystic fibrosis. I found her on a cf chat board and read about how she needed a double lung transplant. She was sick and admitted to the hospital and on the verge of death (just like my husband was) when she got the call and was transplanted. As I checked day after day she would have her ups but mostly downs. I thought about her all day, sent her healing energy and checked her blogs day and night (she had a friend update her blogs while hospitalised). A giant rift formed in the cf forum where I originally found her story because some people didn’t believe her and many people were banned in the ensuing war that followed. I chose to be quiet about it and stopped posting since I remembered what we went through when Danny was in the hospital. I thought if the story is true I wouldn’t want to bring undue added stress to someone who is obviously looking for support on the internet. So still day after day I kept up with her story till they posted she needed a second transplant. Then the blog was taken down. People started to post links to this persons other sites saying she was fake and it was all made up. The truth finally came out that she indeed did not have a lung transplant and never had cystic fibrosis. I was shocked and saddened that someone would go to such lengths to make up such a lie. I felt like it was a kick in the face to those of us who have gone through what she claimed to be experiencing. People who followed her story and talked to her in chat sent her money and gifts. They even took up donations to get her a wii last december. I want to believe the goodness in people, I want to believe that things like this don’t really happen but her it is right in my face. I’m so sad for the cf community right now. How many people who are going through the strugles of cf and transplant will be shunned now for fear of it all being a lie? How many people will look at my myspace, see the pictures and story of what we went through and wonder if it never happened? I’m hurt right now, I know people out there can do horrible things but why? In the end I will still believe in people, believe what they post in blogs and on forums until I’m given proof otherwise. I would rather believe a lier then disbelieve someone who is truely suffering. Here is a link to a blog where the whole lie was discovered….
http://exposetrolls.blogspot.com/2008/08/from-paul-truth.htmlOh, PD, I’m so sorry someone abused your trust like that! I just don’t understand people like that.
Hugs to you and your family!
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http://www.sarahjestin.com/feedbacklists.htmcompletely indicative of the interwebs.
it is sad, but it is common to see this since the net is a big black space where every one can where a mask if they wish and do what they want with no policing.
Sadly this does happen more than you hear about. I’ve had friends who went through horrible times in their lives when one of their close internet friends ‘died’– and the whole time, it was fake.
I heard about this specific one from some friends of mine, they are twins with CF. They kinda had the feeling it was fake and when the suggested it everyone turned on them, which is very sad because they have been fighting this for years and truly know how terrible it is to live with.
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My art: featherdust.comI had questions about her story but I thought maybe they did things differently at other transplant centers. She wrote in her blog that she was given sierra mist right after they extubated her. My husband had to get a swallow study done and wasn’t given any kind of unthickened liquid for over a week post transplant. I also wondered how someone could have survived with a temp of 104 for a whole month or get a second transplant with a temp that high. I was always told there were very few hospitals that did second transplants and why would they transplant someone so sick? I’ve read on the cf boards where some people were questioning if they wanted to go ahead with transplant after reading what this person went through. That just really made me sick to know some people trying to get a second chance at life second guessed it because of a fictitious story.
Yep it happens more often then one cares to think about, which is why I am so guarded about what I comment on everywhere.
On one forum, a pet one at that, that I go on we had some chick come one there for weeks to tell us about her cancer, only to find out the whole thing was BS. I have no idea why someone would do that, but it does make me question humanity sometimes. I am sorry that someone would do that on a forum where people are already hurting.
One of my customers just got scammed out of $4,000. I don’t know the details; I was talking to her husband. They are devastated.
Another customer recently had her piccolo stolen out of her car. As she was telling me, she burst into tears. It had been her single most valued possession.
We don’t need the global village to bring us first or second-hand news of thieves, scam artists, and other upsetting people: we encounter them often enough in our daily lives.
And how many of us, as kids, learned that by pretending to be ill, we gained the sympathy and attention and love of those around us. Most of us grow out of that, but there are those who became addicted to the attention and never did grow out of it. I know a lot of people who only seem happy when they are complaining about their ailments, real or imaginary. If they are like this face-to-face, surely they are likely to be the same, or even more so, in their interactions on the Internet.
The surprising thing to me, then, is that there are so FEW occasions when a whole group of people wake up to realise that one amongst them is a total fake.
Maybe it’s just that most don’t push it as far, or that they get caught early on.
The piccolo lady asked me if I ever get people stealing from me, in my shop. I said “Sure.” She expressed amazement that anyone would steal from a nice store owner like me. I laughed. You just can’t think in those terms and retain any faith in people at all. I can’t go around thinking “Why are these people targeting me?” Instead I think “Some people will take advantage of any opportunity to get something for nothing. I happened to be there for them. More fool me for making it so easy.”
So although having someone string everyone along like this is bad, and will likely make you at least a little less credulous in the future, it should not make you any less of a caring community, and certainly should not have you being more afraid of being taken in again than of failing to rally around someone who really is ill.
Dave said it very well. I know people who complain all the time and make that the basis of any conversation you have with them. Some people thrive off of that kind of attention and, unfortunately, they make people that are truly hurting look very bad indeed to tell their own stories. Purpledoggy, please don’t let this sour you to the goodness of humanity. Don’t cut the tree down because of one bad apple.
Makes me wonder if sometimes people think that way about me, that’s why I don’t comment on it much.
Hey, I don’t need to make stuff up – there’s enough crap going on by itself! 🙄
Snapdragon wrote:Makes me wonder if sometimes people think that way about me, that’s why I don’t comment on it much.
Hey, I don’t need to make stuff up – there’s enough crap going on by itself! 🙄
No @(#*&ing kidding. I don’t have to make stuff up, it happens anyway.
That’s a bummer, PD. I hate it when someone you believed in turns out to be false. The internet unfortunately is full of folks like this…remember the gal with the windfall of Windstones she got for cheap because the owner died and the shop that bought them just trying to unload them? She never came up with pics, asked everyone to put in offers since she was going to sell many of them, then when she’d gotten the forum all worked up and upset about someone dying and everyone being vultures, bailed out, said she was gonna keep them because “it wouldn’t be right to break up the collection” and then disappeared off the forum.
She also wrote before that about a bunch of her collection getting broken by movers. She even went so far with that one to message me asking about repair costs…oy.
Anyway, we’ve seen some here too. They are everywhere…unfortunately.
As for you Snap…we believe you, no one has that many things go wrong all at once and not have it be true. Especially that many unrelated to each other kind of events. You poor guy.
Kyrin
Well said, Kyrin. Generally I think the positive in humanity out weighs the bad. Having said that, it can be discouraging when your path crosses with someone who takes advantage others…
tdm
Ouch. Sucks when people take advantage of others like that.
Other then that, no idea what to say. People think my mother is making up her many ailments, but… she’s not. She doesn’t talk about them to random people to get sympathy, so why would she make something up and then say nothing about it.
Kyrin wrote:That’s a bummer, PD. I hate it when someone you believed in turns out to be false. The internet unfortunately is full of folks like this…remember the gal with the windfall of Windstones she got for cheap because the owner died and the shop that bought them just trying to unload them? She never came up with pics, asked everyone to put in offers since she was going to sell many of them, then when she’d gotten the forum all worked up and upset about someone dying and everyone being vultures, bailed out, said she was gonna keep them because “it wouldn’t be right to break up the collection” and then disappeared off the forum.
She also wrote before that about a bunch of her collection getting broken by movers. She even went so far with that one to message me asking about repair costs…oy.
Anyway, we’ve seen some here too. They are everywhere…unfortunately.
As for you Snap…we believe you, no one has that many things go wrong all at once and not have it be true. Especially that many unrelated to each other kind of events. You poor guy.
Kyrin
Kyrin and everyone,
I’m pretty sure that I recently had a transactions with this person, and she IS legitimate. She just has a lot going on in her life. Just FYI.
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