Faking it

In the early 1990s I worked with a secretary in her forties, Brenda, who told me she had cancer in her leg, and that she would have to go on a medical leave. I found out later the cancer from her leg had been taken care of, but now she had a brain tumor. She told people in the office she had three months to live. This put everyone into a blue funk of despair. Cancer takes far too many people; a horrible disease.

The three months she had to live would have been up in August, and yet by Christmas she was still alive and it seemed to her friends, well. She then told them a miracle had occurred. The brain tumor had shrunk away and disappeared. We all thought, now that is a miracle.

Sometime later, five years or so, I was talking with her former coworker, Cathy, about Brenda. I remarked that it was a miracle how she survived brain cancer. She didn't have brain cancer, said Cathy. Say what? said I. She never had cancer at all, said Cathy.

Fast forward to today, and I was talking with another secretary, who was talking about yet another person who had cancer, a coworker of ours, Ann-Marine. Ann-Marie* was off work for several months fighting cancer, then came back to work. The problem was, as it later came out, she'd never had cancer. She just told everyone she did.

What gives? Why would someone say they have cancer when they don't? It came out in bits and pieces later that the two women, Brenda and Ann-Marie, had so-called "nervous breakdowns." I'm not sure what qualifies as a nervous breakdown. I've thought at times I might be having one, but I couldn't quantify it. What is a nervous breakdown, anyway? My guess is that it's when things get too much for a person, the stress level is so high they can't function. Or at least that's what I thought I was going through. But if that's what they are going through, then why claim cancer? My guess is that the stigma of something wrong mentally is greater than having cancer. Seems odd, but there are still a lot of people who have old-fashioned ideas about mental disorders, even of the temporary kind.

By claiming cancer, these folks are diminishing those who really struggle with that disease. My friend has had stepmothers and friends die of cancer. My wife's mother died of breast cancer in 1964 when she was 44 years old. A coworker of mine died of Non-Hodgkins lymphoma when he was 21, and several people I work with now and in the past have gone through the disease with whatever dignity they could muster. Some made it through, some didn't. But at least they had cancer; they weren't faking it in order to disguise another problem.

I'm not a shrink, so I don't know what such people who do such faking are called, but I'm sure it's a syndrome known to psychiatrists.

When I gave sympathy to Brenda because I thought she was fighting cancer and found out she'd been lying to everyone I felt angry, duped. Why would I trust anything Brenda said? If she'd owned up to her problem, "I have a problem with depression and I can't get out of bed," or "I feel like I'm dying all the time," I could understand it because I've been through it. But I'd rather tell people I'm depressed than lie to them about having cancer.


*Ann-Marie was an hourly employee, so she took the time off as a drop, no pay. If she'd been a contract employee, like me, she would have had to have a doctor's note saying she had cancer in order for her to receive disability from our employer. When she came back to work and her boss found out she had been lying about the cancer she tried to fire her, but Ann-Marie got a lawyer. The school district had no choice: under the Americans with Disabilities Act Ann-Marie could not be fired for having mental problems. I really have no problem with protecting the rights of people, but right now, a few years after her breakdown, Ann-Marie still comes to her job, just does little or no work. According to the lady who told me the story, Ann-Marie's current coworkers ignore her.