Trick or treat!
obviously all disabilities are totally underrepresented in mainstream and non-mainstream fiction, but I’ve been thinking recently that one I’d really like to see, which you could easily write in offhandedly or as a compelling character-building plot point, and have no trouble casting for in live action, is simply: anything that requires continuous, consistently timed medication.
According to CDC surveys circa 2017-19, roughly 1 out of every 7 women in the USA use birth control pills, which usually need to be taken at a very regular daily time in a very regular monthly pattern.
According to my personal experience, it’s extremely possible to live a basically normal life with low but functional vision and also half a dozen other petty ongoing problems, while also having every single day of your life—and, god knows, any travel you want to do—organized around the fact that you need to take multiple eye drops roughly every 12 hours, one of which needs to stay refrigerated at all times.
If you need regular medication, a portal fantasy adventure presents a real problem. An unexpected urban fantasy adventure that prevents you from going home for more than a day is a problem. Excuse me, aliens who have abducted me? If I list the drugs I regularly take, and tell you very roughly what each does, can you synthesize them perfectly? No, I don’t know any of the active ingredients, sorry. Hell, as a romance novel protagonist, an impulsive overnight stay with a hot stranger I met at a bar isn’t an option!
I think this would be a fun challenge for writers to work around while constructing plots, a good source of characterization as they examine how scrupulous a character is about their schedule (or how anxious once off-schedule), and, seriously, so easy to slide into the background if not a focus of the story. Do you know how often I wander into my kitchen half-asleep and take an eye drop? Roughly twice a day! The sitcom au of my life would just have this as background in a wide variety of scenes! AND it’s not something you need to do a lot of research in order to depict—just note “character must take macguffinex every 6-18 hours or they’ll start to get worried about the long-term health of their [insert organ here]” and use that as a background parameter for your story.
