Implementing Addison's Disease Medication in Skyrim
I almost didn't sleep last night because I was thinking so hard about this and I may have actually figured out something that makes sense--but in order for everyone else to understand, I have to explain Addison's Disease. If you're becoming a doctor, at least in the United States, it's highly likely that you read about it, although it's probably condensed to two pages or less. I will do my best to not delve too much into the complexity of it but still try and outline the basics.
Addison's Disease is specifically the autoimmune illness where the immune system attacks the adrenal glands [the little nuggets that sit on top of your kidneys] and destroys them. These glands create the hormone known as cortisol, the stress hormone [no, it's not adrenaline, though it plays a role in that as well]. This hormone controls everything in your body--and I mean everything: physical, mental, emotional. Things you don't even think stress out your body, like laughing, this hormone has a hand in. If not medicated properly, it very quickly leads to death. In the States, roughly 60 people die a year that we know of, and it's considered a rare disease as well--meaning less than 200,000 known cases a year.
The other issue with this disease is that every person is different--what is normal to me is insane to someone else. I take pills several times a day to function. Some people are on a pump, similar to those that suffer with diabetes. For my character, I'm drawing most of my ideas from how I specifically manage my illness, so I would love to hear from others with chronic illnesses about how they would tackle such a thing in the fantasy world of Elder Scrolls that we know and love!
Originally I had considered the effects of fortify as a possibility, but while scrolling through the ingredients I realised that regenerate would make far more sense; the pills I take act as a regeneration of my cortisol rather than fortification or restoration, as the hormone is not being strengthened or restored. Below I've listed all ingredients [which only includes base game and DLCs, not CC] that achieve at least one of these effects:
Regenerate health: emperor parasol moss, garlic, gleamblossom, juniper berries, luna moth wing, Namira's rot, nordic barnacle, vampire dust
Regenerate magicka: dwarven oil, fire salts, garlic, jazbay grapes, moon sugar, mora tapinella, salmon roe, salt, taproot
Regenerate stamina: bee, fly amanita, scaly pholiota
The first thing I noticed was that there are only 3 ingredients in the base game that regenerate stamina compared to health/magicka. I suppose you could include drinking alcohol, but since I have to avoid the substance myself it's likely that my character wouldn't use it either. There is one ingredient that achieves all three of these effects, which is the purple butterfly wing added in the Anniversary Edition through Saints & Seducers/Rare Curios. My character lives in the Reach and the butterfly doesn't spawn naturally in the world unless it's near Sheogorath things, so while it is what I'm looking for, it simply won't do as a sustainable/obtainable ingredient.
Since my character knows her alchemy very well, my partner did suggest that she could harvest blood or adrenal glands from animals, and I may consider this idea if she needed to strengthen her potions or use it as her liquid base instead of water. I also thought that she would have ideal mixtures that would work better than others or take less ingredients; for example, using only garlic and fly amanita, as the garlic achieves two of the effects she's looking for. Salt would be added to all of her potions since Addison's Disease is incredibly salt-wasting [how convenient that it regenerates magicka! I personally cackled when I noticed] [pickles anyone?] [actually she probably could pickle some of her ingredients . . . . I'll file that idea away].
There are a lot of possibilities for combinations here, which is great and gives me something to work with. I may consider researching which ingredients do resist damage or something as a way to negate the pain she also experiences, but for now I'm happy with what I've discovered and put together. This was actually a lot of fun for me to explore and again I would love to read other people's thoughts and ideas! Diseases/disabilities/illnesses aren't explored nearly enough in fantasy settings, especially chronic ones, and I hope this encourages others to do the same and bridge that gap c: <3 And thank you to this post in particular for violently tossing me down this rabbit hole ehe