(CNN) "I never saw it coming," said Susan, whose family requested that we not use their last names. In 2008, her daughter's cancer came back for the third time. Hope was in her early 30s. They cried together visiting the funeral home, as Hope decided which kind of flowers she wanted at her own memorial. She wanted doves to be released. Meanwhile, Hope's doctor couldn't find any past records of her cancer, a bone cancer known as Ewing's sarcoma. He asked Susan for the names of the doctors who had treated her over the past eight years. Susan went through Hope's drawers and cabinets. Empty.Munchausen syndrome by proxy, or medical child abuse, occurs when parents invent or exaggerate an illness in their childrenThere's controversy surrounding whether it is a psychiatric condition
The tattoo across _'s back -- the wings she'd earned -- was a lie. On one occasion, _'s false medical history led doctors to give her daughter an anemia treatment, which sent her into anaphylactic shock, Weber said. It is difficult to say how common -- or uncommon -- _ by proxy is. Had she and her husband not been well-known lawyers in their community, she said, she wonders whether someone might have made an accusation of _ by proxy. "Nobody disputes that this kind of behavior occurs," she said, but without more research on the _ diagnoses, it's difficult to know how often Munchausen is misdiagnosed, as well. "Nobody disputes that this kind of behavior occurs," she said, but without more research on the Munchausen diagnoses, it's difficult to know how often _ is misdiagnosed, as well. Ayoub said that spotting _ by proxy is not a matter of spotting a rare disease or a set of symptoms; it's about looking for a pattern.