Colleen Hauser

Man, this thing just keeps getting weirder and weirder.

 

NEW ULM, MINN. - A felony arrest warrant for deprivation of parental rights was issued today for Colleen Hauser, who is on the run with her son, Daniel, from court-ordered cancer treatment.

Brown County Sheriff Rich Hoffmann announced the new warrant this morning, saying it was issued to ensure extradition to Minnesota, if she is arrested. An earlier warrant for her arrest was based on a contempt of court charge.

It carries  no enhanced criminal penalty, he said, but "is required to give outside law enforcement agencies the authority needed to apprehend and detain the Hausers, should they be located," he said.

California authorities, with assistance from the FBI, are investigating a sighting of the Hausers Tuesday morning in southern California. No new information about their whereabouts was obtained overnight, Hoffmann said.

Hoffmann said Wednesday night that Colleen Hauser and Daniel, 13, were apparently trying to reach Mexico for an alternative medical treatment to chemotherapy.{...}

 

 

Call me crazy---and I know some of you will---but I can't quite ditch a particular thought that crossed my mind: is it possible that Colleen Hauser has some wierd variant of Munchausen-By-Proxy?  

Everyone who's watched some episode of a medical show knows what Munchausens is.  But if you've successfully avoided every repeat of ER over the years, here's the Mayo Clinic's rundown:

Munchausen syndrome is a serious mental disorder in which someone with a deep need for attention pretends to be sick or gets sick or injured on purpose. People with Munchausen syndrome may make up symptoms, push for risky operations, or try to rig laboratory test results in their effort to win sympathy and concern.

Munchausen syndrome belongs to a group of conditions, called factitious disorders, that are either made up or self-inflicted. Factitious disorders can be psychological or physical. Munchausen syndrome refers to the most severe and chronic physical form of factitious disorder.

And here are the symptoms:

• Dramatic stories about numerous medical problems
• Frequent hospitalizations
• Vague or inconsistent symptoms
• Conditions that get worse for no apparent reason
• Eagerness to undergo frequent testing or risky operations
• Extensive knowledge of medical terminology and diseases
• Seeking treatment from many different doctors or hospitals
• Having few visitors when hospitalized
• Reluctance to allow health professionals to talk to family or friends
• Frequent requests for pain relievers or other medication

The dots don't appear to be connecting, I know.  But Munchausens presumes that someone is going out of their way to receive attention from the medical establishment.  What if someone rejected the medical establishment entirely, as the Hauser's have done, and decided to go in the opposite direction?  Wouldn't it then be possible for someone to exhibit some of the same symptoms of Munchausens whilst avoiding mainstream medicine entirely?  Does it make any sense at all that what this woman has done is to flip the Munchausens coin entirely---and this is the end result? Look at that list of symptoms again, yet reverse them.  Sound familiar?

Most people are simply presuming that she's just a mom who's doing what she thinks is best for her kid---and who is going to great lengths to do just that. That could very well be true.  I'm not going to deny that one bit.  But the facts imply something very different.  She subscribes to wishful thinking regarding her son's condition---so much so in fact that she refuses to believe the X-rays that show her son's tumor has grown.  She chalked the growth up to "scar tissue," which any radiologist will tell you doesn't even show up most of the time on any sort of image, whether that be X-rays, CT scans or MRIs, and when it does, it's generally severe enough to make a difference in how they view the scans, i.e. it doesn't show up by itself, but rather show itself through changes to existing anatomy, or so I've been given to understand.  She has deliberately kept her kid in the dark about his condition---the fact that she homeschooled him and, apparently, never taught him to read has helped her cause tremendously.  (And I really don't know how she got away with this.  The State of Minnesota, as my sister-in-law can tell you, is harsh on homeschooling parents, because they want to discourage people from walking down that particular path.  Their kids are tested much more rigorously than regular students.) As if all that wasn't enough, she fed him full of malarkey about how he had turned into a medicine man when he turned thirteen, and was thus educated enough to make his own decisions regarding his care.  Conveniently, medicine man status was awarded after his first chemo treatment, when he balked at going back for more. Then, when the court didn't let her have her way, and said she was endangering her son, she took Daniel and bolted, creating a media sensation in the process. 

Does of all of this mean she's just plain ignorant or is she truly attention-seeking?  I don't know.  All this is just speculation on my part, but it seems to make sense, in a weird, flipped-on-its-head sort of way.  I will simply say this: if, when she gets to a place where she's beyond the long arm of the law, and she shows up on every cable chat show to plead her case, and makes it into a larger issue, well, then, my point may have been made.