Debated between Cafe Society and here, but since this is asking for opinions, I’ll put it here.
I’m writing another novel, and in it, I have a secondary character (the mother of one of the main characters) who’s very ill. I’ve been handwaving it throughout the novel, but now that it’s finished and being beta-read, I kinda need to pin it down. I’m hoping that if I list the symptoms and other details, somebody here can fill in a handy disease that’ll fit the bill (and I’m really hoping there is one).
Details:
Patient is a woman in her early 40s.
Disease came on very quickly (like one week she was relatively fine, next week she was feeling bad, went to the doctor, and found out she was very sick)
It’s rather debilitating at first but not so much that she has to be in the hospital yet. She remains at home with a nurse/caregiver to help her (along with her son, a main character, who’s an 18 year old boy).
She’s probably been sick for a month or two at most at the beginning of the story.
In the course of the story (which takes place over a couple of weeks) she fades rapidly, eventually having to go to the hospital. Near the end of the story she dies.
Assume she has normal health insurance and whatnot–the family isn’t rich (it’s just her and her son) but she has good care, so that’s not a factor in the disease’s progression.
So basically I think I need something with a fast onset, but that might be deceptively not as bad as it seems before striking hard and taking the victim down.
The exact nature of the disease isn’t at all important to the plot, as long as I portray it correctly. I’ll probably just have one character ask the boy what she’s got, he’ll tell her, and that’ll be the end of caring about which disease it is.
I don’t mind if it’s too easy–it just needs to fit the parameters. Mom is only important by her relationship to her son, so she doesn’t really need a lot of depth. Whatever she has just has to be realistic.
A friend of mine in her early 30’s had stomach problems, thought it was nothing, went to the doctor for it, nothing worked, got more tests, and was diagnosed with stomach cancer. She was dead a month after getting the diagnosis. Pretty sad stuff.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob (mad cow) and ALS (Lou Gehrig’s) were the first things that came to my mind after cancer. The former is probably too rare to use. The latter I know usually takes longer to kill people, but it could have a big delay in diagnosis. But cancer is probably easier to use.
Along with the other cancers, a friend of mind went into the doctor with general ‘not feeling good’ and stomach/core pains but was fine other then that and was given 6-8 weeks. He died a month later. He was diagnosed with “Bizarre Cancer” That is, it was a ‘normal’ cancer but they were never able to pin down the origin and therefore couldn’t do a good job treating it. Took him down fast and hard.
Oddly, I can’t find any references to 'bizarre cancer" on the internet but I just checked with a friend of his wife’s and she confirmed that that’s what the doctor’s were calling it.
Pancreatic Cancer is a good choice, but almost seem to “easy” right now. OTOH, ‘bizarre cancer’ probably just sounds made up. You might have to find a happy medium. Maybe some kind of TB that isn’t getting treated will or that she’s ignoring or she picks up a secondary infection while dealing with that one.
What about one of those exotic viruses? What was the one they made that movie about.? I’ve known two people who died of pancreatic cancer. One died about five months after diagnosis and the other about a year.
Not sure how she’d pick up an exotic virus, though–she’s just a regular working person in a large metropolitan area. And I’d be afraid that making it something like that would make the disease more important than it is.
Acute viral myocarditis/cardiomyopathy could be another way to go. Prodrome of just being flu-like for a few weeks with variable course from there that definitely includes progressive heart failure to the point of death within the timeframe you describe. Fatal arrhythmias can occur along the way too. (Think Randy Travis’s recent illness as a template to vary from.)
A bit less … done … than literary cancer, and still fits.
That’s horrible.