you medical people on my journal...

[kaigou]

I know there's some of you out there, so if you have any ideas:

I've got a character who was poisoned. Think a milder, survivable form of strychnine (I think that's the one I mean), where the poison freezes the muscles up. He got a small dose, but it was still close, and as a result his heart's going to take awhile to recover from getting stomped like that. The analogue I've been using is open heart surgery, which apparently does a fair bit of heart-stomping. So I've had the character gradually work his way back to some form of moving about, following the advice given post-surgery to heart patients: walk a bit, then rest, walk a bit more, rest, work your way up to walking up a flight of stairs, lots of rest, etc.

However, the story takes place in the equivalent of the 16th century, so well before any of our fancy modern medicines. Doesn't mean there's no medicine, just that the reasoning might be off (even if the end results work), like thinking aspirin works because of humours, or whatever.

Anyway, so I've got a bit where the character has exerted himself too much, and from what I could tell of the warnings to post-surgery patients, this is why patients often take blood-thinning medicine, to make it easier on the heart. Extrapolating from that, seems like the heart would tire out, can't pump but the body's demanding it, and suddenly you have lack of enough blood, ergo, passing out.

Here's where it might get tricky: the medical person's logic is that a drunk person bleeds twice as much as a sober person from the same-sized wound, so alcohol must make blood run faster and/or be thinner. If blood is normally thick, and the heart is weak, then thinner blood would be easier for the heart. Thus, alcohol is the make-do medicine for someone coming to after dizzy spell, whose heart continues to beat too fast.

In discussions with one of my beta-folks, the point was made that alcohol also raises blood pressure. I know it's a sedative (calm down the heart?), and I thought I found something that mentioned it's also a kind of blood-thinner, so would those positives outweigh the blood-pressure increase? Or would the addition of two shots' worth of alcohol make no substantive difference, or would it actually just kill the character outright?

Anyone? even wild guesses, if there aren't any doctors in the house. tia!

Comments

[kaigou]

I went and played on webmd (which naturally gave me lots of warnings of IF YOU ARE FEELING THIS RIGHT NOW, GO TO A HOSPITAL IMMEDIATELY and doesn't have an option for "no, just researching on how to whump a character, thanks!") and basically what I want is something that starts like a kind of severe allergic reaction -- that would be the can't-breathe part -- and ends with bad (3-4 month) bout of mono. Never had mono myself (I think I maxed out on my quota by getting strep every blooming winter until the age of 12), but as I understand, it kind of comes and goes during the virus' run, including fatigue, muscle soreness, some fever, that kind of loose set of flu-like symptoms.

Since the key point for the story is a) in the onset, difficult breathing to outright impossible to breathe and b) slow recovery -- then could it be that if you survive the first part, then your body just has to work the rest of it out of your system? The rest of the symptoms are easy enough to add in (fever, dizziness, weakness) as part of the onset. The really dramatic part of throats closing up is what I don't want to let go of, since it's also acting as a bit of character reveal for the MC, too. But instead of the throat muscles spasming, if it's inflammation, would they just swell up so much the throat closes? I was thinking something like tonsillitis, where it's the top of the throat that gets blocked off. That would be handy.

Now I shall go poke around on webmd and see how many more terrified alerts I can get. Heh. It's the little things that amuse the most, sometimes.

[kathmandu]

Acute allergic reactions to food certainly have a reputation for swelling the throat to the point where breathing stops. I just don't know how you'd keep that from being fatal, pre-epi-pens.

[erika]

Sorry to show up 3 days later, but does it have to be a poison? I can think of a disease that'll do that.

[kaigou]

Yep, has to be a poison of one kind or another, since it's an intentional attack on a large group of people. There's only one character of that group who's a central character in the story (so we only see his recovery), but he's just one among many in the original attack.

The crux seems to be that most toxins/poisons work their way out of the body pretty quickly, and a long recovery means long-term damage that may never get better (and in fact may just get worse). So I'm considering that the poison has a side-effect of, idk, like suppressing the immune system and opening the window to illness, and when the character does catch something that is what actually prompts the long bronchitis-level recovery, not the poison itself.

Although mostly I can be somewhat vague about it, since this isn't a culture with modern medicine. Mostly I just wanted to know whether alcohol would kill the poor guy, when he does pass out (for whatever reason).

[erika]

Nah, probably not. I doubt it would help him, but it won't /hurt/ him. It also depends on the 'dose'-- are you saying he's going to be given 5 shots worth of alcohol, or is the 'doctor' giving him 2?

If you go with the 'illness during recovery' bit, may I recommend whooping cough? After the initial infection stage, person feels completely fine except for major coughing spasms every 10-15 minutes. It's supposed to work its way out of your body in 3 weeks even without antibiotics, BUT I can tell you for a fact that once it gets established in someone with a crap immune system, you're looking at a 3-6 month recovery period. AND, I can also tell you for a fact that there's no long term damage -- my lungs have the same/better capacity as they did before I had it. :)