Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Medical Question: Illness early 1980's.

AJ Luck asks:
I just found your website and I have to say….I am hooked! What a great concept!!
I am a fiction writer currently working on a spiritual thriller project.
I have a character that is in her late 70’s in the early 1980’s. Ideally I would like her to suffer about a year before passing away. I need to find a way to have her pass away-possibly in her sleep. I need to find something semi complex for that era that would allow her to hide the (fatal) disease, at least for a considerable amount of time.
I would love your thoughts!!
Thanks so much!
Jordyn says:
Here are a few ideas for your illness.
Cancer: There are a couple of cancers that when discovered, even with treatment, death might occur in about a year. A few to consider would be brain, liver, pancreas or kidney.
Neurological Disease: Here you could do a rapidly progressing ALS which is also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.
Cardiac: In general, she could have congestive heart failure. There are a number of causes. This could have her feeling generally unwell for a long time and then you could have sudden death really at any point in your story line. Here's a blog post I did along those lines.
Hope this helps AJ and good luck with your novel!
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AJ is a Christ follower trying to encourage others by being transparent in her trials and triumphs. You can find her a http://randomnessofluck.com/.

2 comments:

  1. Wow - this post was incredibly disturbing to my ego! ;-) When the 1980's are referred to as "that era" then I know I'm in big trouble! LOL
    Excuse me while I count my gray hairs!

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  2. I know Ava... it's hard with medicine. The interventions can change quickly. I've been in nursing 18 years (which doesn't seem a crazy long time) and I'll catch myself saying... "Do you remember when we used to..." Scary.

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