Insanity or Paralysis or Both?

syphilis
Sexually transmitted disease caused by the spiral-shaped bacterium (spirochete) Treponema pallidum. Untreated, it runs its course in three stages over many years, often starting with a painless hard sore, or chancre, developing within a month on the area of infection (usually the genitals). The second stage, months later, is a rash with arthritis, hepatitis, and/or meningitis. The third stage, years later, leads eventually to paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death. The Wassermann test is a diagnostic blood test for syphilis.

Aids just attacks your immune system leaving you vulnerable to to catch what might eventually kill you.
So....a person with aids could get meningitis easily, and not respond well to antibiotics...and suffer paralysis and mental disorders...other diseases are...Encephalitis....i'll let you research these.....Hodgkin's Disease...Hysteria...
Hmmmm...this link seems to provide a bunch you can go over...
http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/sym/paralysis_symptoms.htm

Could be quite a wait for syphilis, plus you'd have to have a character get syphilis now and it has been pretty quiescent for a while, except here and there.

AIDs - paralysis is not any key symptom.


My suggestion is not to name any disease. After all, paralysis is basically metaphoric, is it not? It is antagonistic to the ambiance of the story to be too detailed.

Would be better to offer suggestions if we knew more about the character.....like age would be an important factor....and...if you wanted a slow progressing disease or rapid

I'm old enough to have friends or friends of friends who have gone through various debilitating deaths, and so I am a little betwixt re someone writing a fantasy story about that.

Besides, the story will only work at the side of the disease.
The odd symptom will suffice, or a couple of words. Less is more - and is not so using of people who have enough michegas as it is.

Thanks


Hey, thanks for the help guys!

Well the character is permanently living in a private medical care facility. Originally her troubles were not explained as being caused by a disease, she was simply experiencing mental troubles. Later in the story, she experienced a lot of health problems that culminated in paralysis. Anyway, I did a poor job at putting the two story strands together, so I decided to make them all stem from the same disease. (Seems to me like the logical solution.) Anyway, that's why I'm out looking for a disease.



And although, I agree less can be more. In this case more seems to be more. I want to be able to know just enough about the disease to ?'over hear' the doctors talking about it. Helplessness is really the main theme of the story, and I think that technical jargon is a great way to make the commoner feel helpless (whether it's intentional or not.)


PS: If there is a to hospitalize the character without the insanity. I would actually like that better. I want the paralysis, but insanity was the only thing I could think of that would hospitalize somebody for years. If you guys know something I don't (which you probably do) then I'd love to know it.

Hmmmm....this day and age, they seem to have an answer for everything lol....what year does this story take place?

Current Time.

Oh Man!
No more help?!

Eh, in my memory, the classic connections have been syphilis with insanity and or paralysis. But, I dunno. Have you googled the two together with, say, symptoms?

That Might Work
I thought though, that the whole insanity part was more of a myth. See I don't really know anything about diseases. If syphilis can cause insanity I think that might work.

PS: I would though, prefer a disease not quite so sexually oriented. Or am I confused about that too?

A link on syphilis -

http://www.vh.org/adult/patient/obgyn/syphilis/

A link on conversion disorder -

http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/topic112.htm

Thanks
You've been great! Thanks!

<no problem... my ex husband is a writer - I understand...>

The conversion disorder, which I've never heard of before, makes more sense to me relative to your story needs...

if you go to google.com and enter 'conversion disorder', you'll probably find a lot more info, though it will take a bit of sleuthing.

I had a client/patient with a conversion disorder when I worked in a rehab facility 20+ years ago.

Truly one of the oddest clients/diagnoses I've ever worked with. Her primary therapist and I were just talking about A a few months ago. Memorable for both of us.

Again!
Hey, Sorry to be a pain in the butt. Got another question. Does anyone know of a disease that can cause measurable deterioration of the brain? Hence it isn't just like the brain doesn't seem to be working. There's actual deterioration. Anyway, I really like the "conversion disorder" but I might go with something with an actual physical disorder. I was reading on the "conversion disorder" and they said there are no actual physical causes.

You need to get to some sort of psychiatric site to chat about this, I think. At least some of us think biochemical mechanisms underly much behavior, societally approved or problematic, with the added perplexity that experiential components affect change too.

Heh, good luck. So, you're tied in to this story?

I say, you're tied to this story? since I have spent a lot of time in my life around stories changing. Things seem generally if not always to flow better if they start from a known circumstance and behavior instead of construction laid upon more construction - but that is just my view.. If you are going for sci-fi, I am no help at all.

Which is not to discourage you from doing that... but wondering, if it is sci-fi you are interested in, then ask a question in the original writing or literature forum, and give a link to this one, if you know how to do that, and if you don't, some of us can help you.