A 28-year-old man arrived at a Boston emergency department with right lower abdominal pain that looked so much like appendicitis that doctors asked psychiatry to see him quickly before surgery. On the way to the CT scanner, he told staff that his pregnant fiancée had been killed in a car accident.
The scan showed no appendicitis, and surgery was canceled. Then psychiatrists began piecing together his history, and much of what he had told them fell apart too.
