I (29F) have been the main caretaker of a friend (28F) for the last 2 years as she went through terminal illness. I found out she had been lying about it all and wasn't sick at all.

This one is a doozy so buckle up. Sara and I had been friends in college and decided to be roommates after graduation as we were both going to professional school in a different city. We had lived together for 2 years when she found out she was sick (April 2019). She had been passing out a lot and the doctors told her she had an autoimmune condition that was attacking her cardiac cells which progressed into heart failure. We had to abruptly end our lease so she could move into an apartment closer to the hospital for a clinical trial. The year that followed, she had hundreds of different surgeries and procedures trying to save her heart resulting in infertility, kidney failure, and a bunch of other side effects. This eventually landed her on the heart transplant list. In March of 2020, she received a heart transplant but had a multitude of other issues with rejection and clotting resulting in even more procedures and surgeries.

Sara's family situation was difficult. Her parents had divorced when she was really young and her dad was not a part of her life. She was raised by her mom and they had a relatively good relationship until Sara got sick. Her mom had a mental break and was convinced that there was nothing wrong with Sara and started becoming really abusive physically and emotionally. She would do things like pour her medications down the drain and cut wires to medical devices. Sara's closest family were her aunt and uncle who lived an hour away and came to most of her appointments with her. Her uncle was a doctor and had a lot of connections to get her the care she needed.

Beside her aunt and uncle, Sara had very limited support during this time. Most of our college friends lived in different places and I was really the only one who was physically able to help her during this time. And she was dying so did everything I could. I spent hours going over appointments and lab work. I made dinner for her multiple times a week. I slept on her couch when she felt like she wouldn't make it through the night. I dropped everything to care for her, including often my own friends and family. My 28 year old close friend was dying and had no one to be there for her through it all - I did what anyone would do.

It is important to mention that I was in medical school during this time, so even though most of my free time was spent with Sara, I hardly had any free time to begin with. From the beginning there was always something weird about Sara's illness. Her doctors would make stupid mistakes that I was always appalled by. This prompted me to become even more entwined with her life as it seemed like there was always a doctor messing up and it was up to me and her uncle to double check everything to prevent her from dying. Obviously, this was very stressful for a medical student as I basically knew nothing and had barely scratched the surface of medicine. But whenever something didn't make sense to me, I would always attribute it to me not knowing a lot about that area of medicine or communication breakdown from her doctor to her then back to me. A lot of things get lost in translation.

Around the time of her heart transplant, I texted a small group of our close friends who lived in other cities updating them about her status while she was in surgery. Sara had told me she was keeping them all in the loop but they all seemed really surprised when I texted them. After the surgery, Sara had found out I sent the text and was really, really upset with me. She said that I crossed a boundary and I had no right telling other people her health information. I was confused because I was like you told me these people knew what was going on and I thought they might want to know that you survived the surgery. ???

This sort of thing happened often where she would get extremely angry with me for "crossing boundaries" by talking to others about her health. She claimed that she didn't want everyone to know what what going on because didn't want them to treat her differently or pity her because she was dying. She also said that she had a lot of trust issues due her dad leaving her when she was young and now her mom abandoning her when she needed her most and she was afraid that if people knew they would just leave.

Truth is, I just needed to tell people because I needed support. I was trying to be a full time med student and take care of a dying friend (in the middle of a global pandemic) and it started to weigh on me. A lot. Around July 2020, I had come to the realization that our relationship was extremely toxic. She would constantly claim I was being a bad friend for the littlest things, we would get into an argument, and then she would send a long love-bombing apology text. I knew the friendship was bad but we had been friends for years and she was basically going to die at any moment. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be a dying 28 year old without any parents so I gave her a lot of slack for how she dealt with it all. I tried to take a step back and force her to include some of our other good friends as support as well because I had been caring for her for over a year and I couldn't do it alone anymore.

Around this same time, I started to noticed that somethings weren't adding up. First of all, I was gaining a little bit more medical knowledge and second of all she had been "dying" now for 16 months and did not look near as ill as she should have. She started saying things that just didn't make any sense like the ER not admitting her in times when I know 1,000% they would have. I was suspicious but if you ask someone "are you actually dying? I don't believe you." and it turns out they are, you automatically are the biggest asshole ever.

It eventually got to the point where I brought it up to one of our mutual friends who knew the whole situation and was also in med school but we agreed it was near impossible for her to be lying. She had a scar from where they placed an internal cardiac monitor, there was a basket full of prescription bottles by her bed, all the medications she was taking and doctors she was seeing were real and what you should be doing if you have her condition. She had sent us snapchats of her in a hospital bed. She had even shared the letter that her heart donor's wife had sent and shown us pictures of their baby. I'd seen the transplant list paperwork on her counter she was supposed to fill out.

But I just couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. I had never been to a doctors appointment with her (mix of my busy schedule and her "trust" issues), and I had never met her aunt and uncle who were her other primary caregivers. She would frequently ask me to get dinner with them or meet her and her aunt for manicures but I was always out of town (every single time). We both shared our location with each other and I started to check hers when she would say she was going in to the hospital for something. I noticed it would always go to "location services not available." It could be that she was in a part of the hospital that had bad reception or she put her phone on airplane mode. But she also could be lying.

Finally, in October 2020 she told me that she was driving herself to a bigger city a few hours away for an urgent heart procedure. It was scheduled for 3:30pm on a Saturday. At this point in my medical career I knew that there is no procedures being done at 3pm on a Saturday where the patient can drive themselves to the hospital. If something is happening then, its because they are actively dying and came in an ambulance. I decided to call her sister. Sara had told me that she didn't speak with her sister much anymore because her sister knew about the abuse her mom was inflicting on her and didn't do anything so I was extremely nervous. She picked up and thats when I got confirmation that it was all a lie.

I met up with her mom, sister, and grandmother the next day and we figured out everything she had been telling me and our group of friends had been a lie - her illness, the things about her family, her job, she even had a boyfriend for over a year that none of us had ever heard about. Her mom still was able to access her medical records and confirmed she did get a minor procedure for an arrhythmia (where the scar came from) in December but had not seen a doctor at all beside that.

When Sara got home (she had called me the night before sobbing because she was "in so much pain from the surgery" She was actually at an engagement party) her mom confronted her. I went over later that night when her mom was still there and tried to get some answers and basically all she said was, "well you seem to know everything so why don't you figure it out." I blocked her number and have had basically no contact with her since then.

I told the rest of our group of close friends and my family but haven't done more than that. I tried to reach out to some of her co-worker friends to see if she had also been lying to them but they all gave weird responses like, "I don't feel comfortable discussing this" or "I haven't heard anything about this but I hope you guys can work it out." I am concerned about what lies she could have been telling others about me. Her mom was kind and if she was telling me that she was abusing her then what could she have made up about me?

I overall feel like this person is just dangerous. She works in healthcare (how I think she got a lot of the information) and it honestly frightens me to think what she might be capable of. She has a new boyfriend she is putting all over social media. We have a large group of mutual friends from college who also have no idea. Part of me feels like people should know what she did so they can be aware of what kind of person she is but the other part of me is afraid that I will look like the stupid crazy one if I say anything (I am in med school after all, I should have probably known sooner).

I spoke with Sara's mom once on the phone and she told me she is seeing a counselor once a week but she can't force her to do anything more than she chooses to do. I spoke with Sara briefly on the phone about 3 months after I found out and she apologized and says she is seeing three different mental health providers. I don't know if I believe her. She did lie to me about seeing a therapist in the past.

Sara's illness had a profound effect on my life. No one should feel like they are the sole support for someone who is dying and Sara would get angry with me for "sharing health information" anytime I vented to friends for support. She emotionally and psychologically abused me for almost two years. It had a huge effect on my studies and grades as most of my study time was dedicated to caring for her. It had an effect on my relationships - she would always have a crisis when I was with my long distance bf or when I had plans with other friends or was with my own family. I don't know if my desire to warn others and tell them what she did to me is just me being revengeful or if its the right thing to do. Or do I just leave this all in the past and try to move on with my life.

TLDR: A close friend faked being terminally ill for almost 2 years and it ruined my life. what do I do now

Submitted February 18, 2021 at 03:36PM by instascienceexplain https://ift.tt/2NbpP2Z