I'm planning out a YA in which the MC's mother has Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy, and it's kind of...spread to him, in that he's starting to harm himself medically to keep her attention. It all comes to a head when his eight-month-old brother disappears, and he has to figure out if this is another of his mother's cries for attention, or if he's actually gone missing. But I'm struggling in the medical area. I know very little about medicine, and whenever I try to Google-fish for something, I end up with a) a major info-dump or b) something that zigzags out of nowhere. So I need help. Can anyone think of some relatively simple ways of making someone ill in a way that would produce conflicting lab results etc. (common in MSbP). Also, does anyone have anything to share? Just...things they've read, interesting tidbits, things you wouldn't expect, anything that could help.