"The process was basically something like this: Collect some shit in a little container. Mix with water to make it watery. Fill a syringe. Use a needle to inject into the area I wanted to cause an abscess in."

Eventually, Karol switched from feces to saliva. Not because injecting feces into your own body can damage your organs or even kill you (it can, and happily will!), but because it smelled bad. That was her sole objection. At this point, "faking it" becomes nebulous -- she was doing it for attention, but it was making her legitimately and incredibly sick.

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We were as shocked as you to learn that cramming literal shit into your bloodstream might have ill effects.

"I was poisoning myself, and that's how I gave myself sepsis twice. I was in the hospital for two weeks both times, on massive doses of antibiotics, and it's not pleasant, because your entire body aches. I got the worst migraines. You can't sleep because you're feverish. I was in the hospital every few months, in and out."

She talks about it like it was inconvenient. Sepsis is some of the most serious shit shit can pull. Most cases have a 30 percent fatality rate, while the more serious forms hit 50 percent. So it's probably a good thing that Karol didn't go for the Injecting Yourself With Your Own Shit Triple Crown.

Research suggests a hodgepodge of potential causes: underlying physical or mental issues, personality disorders, childhood neglect, a serious craving for those little cheeses they put in "get well" baskets, etc. In Karol's case, she knew exactly why she was doing it.

"I wasn't getting correct treatment for my bipolar and borderline personality disorder. I've been in treatment since I was 13, [but] I was discharged when I was 18, and I tried calling them up and they said, 'You are not an immediate danger to yourself or others.'"

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Counterpoint.

So Karol did the logical thing (well, the logical thing for someone who is deeply unwell) and made herself an immediate danger to herself.

"I was begging for help, and I wasn't getting the help I needed. When you go to the hospital, you're cared for, you get attention, and when you go home, that goes away."

"They tend to take it as a personal affront, which always confused me. When I was doing my nursing training, there was some discussion between these doctors that this patient may have a factitious disorder, and they were all really offended by it. Why would you be offended?! It's a mental disorder. I had a surgeon who got really angry, because I think he caught on to what I was doing, and they tend to take it really personally. They're like, 'How dare you do this. You're wasting my time,' and I'm like, 'Yeah, but I'm also wasting myself. I could be killing myself.'"

It's understandable. Doctors are very busy, there are a lot of patients to treat, and they don't want to waste their time on Ol' Poo-Blood when some kid in the next room has cancer. But someone with infectious landmines all over their body needs help regardless of how they got there. Luckily, some doctors had a better response.

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Such as the controversial stance of "Treat self-imposed sepsis like it might indicate a serious fucking problem."

"When I moved on to doing the breast abscess, I had a really understanding surgeon. He figured it out pretty quickly. He pulled me aside and asked, 'Are you doing this to yourself?' and I said, 'Yep! I can't stop! I've tried!' He said, 'Well, I'll keep operating on you because I don't want you to be hurt, but you should really get help.' At that point, I was not ready to get help."

Karol lives in one of those commie countries where they give citizens free healthcare and borscht in exchange for turning over all their guns and bald eagles, so she didn't rack up expenses. But time spent injecting poop into yourself and then suffering the consequences is time spent away from the office, and that has its own financial consequences.

"There'd be weeks when I couldn't work. I'm lucky; since I was 18, I've been on the disability support pension. I was working back then, but if I didn't have the pension to fall back on, I would have ended up back at home with my parents or on the street."

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For those asking, "What could be worse than spending all that time in a hospital?!" here's your answer.

Now imagine you live in the land of the free (to rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of hospital bills). Remarkably few debt collectors accept payment via Hallmark cards with sad cartoon bears on them. No, not even if they say "I'm beary sorry you're not feeling well."

Here's a case of a man whose doctors cut him off of treatment because he couldn't keep paying his bills. Here's a woman who accumulated over a million dollars seeking facetious treatments for her toddler. And here's a video of baby sloths to make up for those first two links.

It also makes it difficult for her to visit the hospital, even if it's for a legitimate purpose. Kind of like how recovering meth addicts can't simply swing by the Walmart without getting those old temptations. Luckily, Karol's disorder also led her to a new career path.

"I was always really into nursing and medicine, so I did a lot of research before I started making myself sick. It actually had a good outcome, because I ended up specializing in wound care. I had to see a wound care nurse just about every day for a year and a half, [so] I kind of empathize with people who have chronic wounds."

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Plus, it's a lot easier to keep people from picking at their stitches when you can break out the butt numbness story.

So what finally inspired Karol to seek help? Did she make herself so sick that she finally realized she had a problem? Did one inspirational doctor finally give her the help she needed, and in doing so kick off an unusually disgusting Nicolas Sparks story? Or did she realize that no one was feeding her cat? Yeah, it's the last one.

"I decided I had to stop making myself sick because I couldn't look after him and be sick."

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You can't get/give nuzzles from the ER.

She then had a psychotic break. "I started believing God was talking to me, and all of that sort of stuff, and because God disapproved of all of this stuff and me hurting myself, I had to stop. I went to a doctor and got a proper diagnosis." Her treatment addressed her underlying mental disorders, allowing her to finally work on her real problem and move on with her life. Which is great and all, but it's worrying that help had to come from a cat and the voice of God instead of, you know, a doctor. Maybe the cat can get a medical degree.

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