Anyone in tuned with blog world may have read speculation regarding the site Friends of Pepe - a blog about a girl with CF who is so sick that she's been in the hosp for almost a year.....while waiting for a tx for 2 years (which she 'got' on July 3rd to boot!) all while battling sepsis and a fever no lower than 99*F for the last year. While waiting in a hosp in the states - by many standards - her situation went largley neglected by docs as she waited, was constantly intubated and extubated, had lung collapses....infections with cultures sent off to MY hosp...blah blah blah....was placed on ECMO, medically induced comas, suffered from CO2 poisoning (high carbon dioxide levels that can incapciate you) was on high volumes of O2 even after tx.....you get the picture.
Reading that alone is enough to kill someone. For fuck's sake, having frigging sepsis and not dying of it after having it for almost a year would most likely kill Jesus Christ himself! Yet this person soldiered on...or so we thought....Transplant came last month and she got no better...she had innumerable impromptu surgeries to fix the new lungs...fix her heart....one such surgery even took place on the bed w/o anesthetic. Yeah...drastic and dramatic.
I never mentioned the site b/c I always had my doubts that it wasn't real, but still, at the end of the night, i said a prayer for this person....tho i found it difficult to locate that small chamber of compassion that exsist in my heart sometimes. But i still did...And then today the whole thing got blown to hell when it was discovered that this Pepe/Gina person doesn't exist, that their situation isn't real...and that it's all a sham.
People donated money. They sent gifts and they got their churches to say prayers. The site had over 270, 000 hits and each entry had easily 200 comments of encouragment....
All for what? A frigging fraud!
I'm not mad. Hell, I'm not even shocked. I'm simply baffled. As someone living with an honest to god illness - 2 for the record! - it absoltely boggles my mind why someone would want to glamourize such a situation! What kind of sick fuck wants to feign an illness they don't have? WHY FUCKING WHY!? I don't get it! It bothers me to no end, knowing that honest legit people like myself, Alice....everyone who i have a link to ( i hope!) have real issues... who deal and struggle everyday...and this sick fuck isn't even real!
It's enough to make me want to shut this place down sometimes.....I would never in a million years think of wanting to glamourize something like this. It's a fucking transplant, it's not Easter. It's painful, and scary, and isolating, and you pretty much damn well give up everything you have until that moment comes when your life is handed back to you.
I'd hate to think that my blog and my issues would inspire someone to fake something like that. Why?
What the hell is wrong with people?
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5 comments:
It's sick. How someone can take an entire country, an entire world for a ride amazes me! Q let the truth out on cf2chat. She took him for a ride too. I feel like a fool, though I speculated about those doubts too, with you. I'm just glad that truth has come out and maybe now we can all move on, and TRY to forget about it. But the lasting effects of something like this are immeasurable (sp?). Can we truly trust anyone? It's a sad world :(
<3
I'm not sure if I beleive Paul either... but I do feel sorry for him. For whatever reason.
I don't have CF (or any lung disease for that matter)...so although I thought most of the story sounded a bit dramatic...I didn't really know enough to know it wasn't real. (Does that make sense?) It's all a crazy situation, that's for sure! I'm glad that you are still blogging, and I appreciate reading your honest take on things. I continue to pray for you...
I am so pissed off. And I fell for the whole thing from the start. I thought Gina was the strongest person alive. Bullshit. What a mockery on our disease and transplantation!
Very sad =(
hope you well Bree.
Don, SA
As a friend of somebody who died of complications of CF I am incredibly saddened by the Pepe thing. I had been following the blog for quite a while (a few months maybe) and fell for every word. I used to be a nurse and still fell for it. Every day I checked in I was hoping and praying for Pepe's miraculous recovery and was ecstatic when she finally got her tx. All for nothing. I think these people do it for various reasons - sadness, loneliness, pathological need to be sympathised with, Whatever the reasons I bet she/he underestimated the impact it would have on the CF community. Hopefully they will have learned the lesson. Keep blogging on regardless I say. Ok it is a selfish request because I love reading your blog. And I still pray that you will get your tx very soon. Louise
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