A nurse shaved her head and put a cannula in her arm to convince her family she was dying of leukaemia as part of a £180,000 pension scam.
Amanda Muir even convinced the NHS to prescribe her drugs including morphine despite not having the disease.
The 46-year-old was jailed after admitting to fraudulently obtaining £185,442 from the Scottish Pensions Authority for her 'ill health retirement'.
Muir, a neonatal nurse who worked at Wishaw General Hospital in Lanarkshire, even altered her appearance and took weight loss medication to make it seem as if she was undergoing chemotherapy, Livingston Sheriff Court was told.
Fiona Hamilton, prosecuting, told the court Muir had been referred for palliative care within the NHS in June 2024.
But on August 12, a member of the care team raised 'red flags' about her medical history and confirmed that the accused's consultant at a Spire private hospital had not treated her for cancer.
The consultant confirmed that the letters purportedly signed by him were not genuine.
Detectives who went to arrest Muir, who was on holiday in Portpatrick, Wigtownshire, found her in bed with a cannula in her arm and her head shaved.
Police later found templates derived from the consultant's original letter telling her she did not have cancer at Muir's home in Bathgate, West Lothian.
Defence counsel Jonathan Crow revealed that the accused had since been diagnosed with a 'factitious disorder' - a mental illness in which a person acts as if they have an illness by deliberately producing, feigning, or exaggerating symptoms.
He said her friends and family had effectively disowned her.
Mr Crow told the court: 'On her behalf I'm instructed to issue a public apology for all those who have been affected by her behaviour and her criminality. She describes a snowball effect where one thing led to another until she couldn't turn back from what she was doing.'
He added that she had never been in trouble before and still had £100,000 of the money which she was willing and able to return.
Passing sentence, Sheriff Susan Craig highlighted that Muir had received prescriptions for controlled drugs from the NHS, although those had not been charged as crimes.
She said: 'It's important to state that this is a fraud on the Pensions Agency by producing 16 fraudulent letters.'
'It was a substantial fraud and it resulted in you receiving a significant sum of money. The other aggravating factor is that the fraud went on for a very long time and that you kept up the deceit despite knowing you were not ill.'
She added: 'It appears to me your culpability in this matter was high and the harm you caused was significant. While the Pensions Agency is not an individual it's a public body and it's publicly funded.'
Sheriff Craig said a community sentence was not appropriate and jailed Muir for two years. Consideration of confiscation proceedings was continued until December.