People here were incredulous last night when I suggested that Holmes might yet be faking his injury, and unfortunately I had to go to bed so I couldn't explain, but I wanted to set the record straight. First I should say, I work in the health insurance industry doing fraud investigations. You wouldn't believe some of the things people will do to fake an injury for disability payments, etc. Sometimes doctors are in on it so they can bill for nonexistent procedures, but often they're unaware.
An MRI is a useful diagnostic tool, but it can be fooled in a number of ways.
One, from an imaging point of view. The most common way to do this is to bring a fake limb into the MRI machine with you. For example, as Holmes is climbing in, he might fold his leg underneath him so it's not within the area being imaged. Then, he could place a cadaver leg (you can get these from medical supply companies) that has the desired injury into the MRI's field. Lizfranc injury you want? Lizfranc injury you have.
Two, MRI machines are controlled by computers (amazingly, often running the Windows OS). They are also networked to make sharing of images easier. Hackers can and do remotely break into an MRI machine and replace images with others, showing whatever injury they want. We had one case where a member of a hospital's IT staff was getting kickbacks to let attackers through the firewall, but that's far from the only way in. This guy's weird sense of humor got him caught when he replaced one of the images with a picture of a clown.
Three, an MRI needs to be heavily interpreted sometimes. It's not obvious like an x-ray. A sympathetic doctor could very well misdiagnose a patient while looking at an MRI, especially if the patient is complaining of symptoms consistent with a particular injury.
You really wouldn't believe what lengths people will go through. We had one guy on an AbioCor (a completely implantable artificial heart). Now, you may not be aware, but artificial hearts aren't usually sold to the patient to be implanted, they're leased, and the cost depends on how many beats per minute the patient wants. That way, those with a sedentary lifestyle don't need to spend as much as those who want to be active. Well, this one guy was an electronics wizard, and he was able to reprogram the heart (they can be wirelessly programmed from close range) to give him more beats per minute than he was entitled to. They guy literally could have been doing jumping jacks while only spending enough money to sit on a couch. And, to add insult to injury, it took almost a year to get a court order to get the heart back.
So the moral of the story is that I don't have proof that Tone is faking it, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.
