The Handy Little Handbook of Character Torture. This is a place where sickfic and h/c writers can send asks and experienced writers can answer and give advice. The goal is to start conversation and share ideas/knowledge/technique. If you're interested in being a mod, message the creator, J, on his main, @lickstynine.
Do you know any relatively fast-acting poisons (within a matter of hours) with symptoms that resemble something like food poisoning or having too much to drink (i.e., nausea, stomach ache/cramps, dizziness, blurred vision, etc.)?
Really high doses of muscarine- a poison found in some mushrooms- could kill in about 7-10 hours. Generally it starts feeling like you have food poisoning (vomiting, darrhea, headache, abdominal pain, sweating), then about the 3 hour mark your blood pressure and heart rate go way down and you get respiratory distress and become comatose.
Used before the onset of the low blood pressure and coma, atropine can prevent death and disability.
Hello! I have questions about femur fractures. Namely, would it be possible for a person in a wilderness setting without access to real medicine to survive a femur fracture? For purposes of this exercise, let's say the person does have a makeshift shelter, and other uninjured people around them to try and provide some kind of care.
Yes, it would be possible- if the person was lucky. If the bone was not displaced (or displaced only slightly) at the fracture site and there was someone vaguely trained in wilderness first aid to help them.
They would need some kind of splint for the leg (which would help cut down on pain) and someone that could bring them water and food and help them use the bathroom. They would also need some padding under them to prevent hypothermia since they wouldn't be moving as much.
Re: your recent post on the flu vaccines. Might be a stupid question, but is there a reason we can't just get a course of every possible flu combination? Either right at once or over the course of, say, weeks/months instead of one or two a year? I hate needles. Get it over with. Superflu me
Well, among other things (that have been mentioned in the comments on that post) it takes a lot of effort to create a vaccine, and the research process is expensive. Likely a vaccine covering thousands of strains of flu would cost so much no one could afford it. Since vaccines work better the more people take them, it makes sense to create a cheaper vaccine that more people can access, even if that means they have to get a new one every year.
So. I understand the body produces the enzyme, lactase, to help break down milk sugars. I also understand that people who are lactose intolerant don't produce/produce enough of this enzyme to comfortably consume many milk products. What I don't know is if there's a limit on how much lactose an average person with average lactose tolerance can intake in, say, an hour. Like the whole milk chugging challenge from the 90's? I distinctly remember reading that the reason people couldn't consume the entire gallon was because of the lactose, not the volume. Yet I can't find anything like that posted anywhere now.
Am I remembering this incorrectly? I mean, can my average character produce enough lactase to eat a metric ton of ice cream in one sitting? I imagine they would have some amount of gastric distress from reflux alone... but what about lactase?
(I realize this question is all kinds of jumbled. I hope you understand what I'm asking. 😭)
So first I would say it is unlikely that throwing up after doing the milk challenge had anything to do with lactase.
Lactase is expressed in the small intestine, not the stomach, which means that the main effect of consuming lactose with inadequate lactase would be gas and diarrhea, not vomiting. The vomiting was because of the volume and fat/protein content of the milk, not the lactose.
About 70% of adults do not produce enough lactase to consume normal dairy comfortably. HOWEVER, we have another way of consuming delicious lactose- bacteria in our colon.
Colonic gut bacteria can also break down lactose. While the amount of lactase we produce remains consistent no matter what, the amounts of these lactose-consuming bacteria change with the amount of lactose we consistently eat. This means we can functionally "train" for lactose consumption by eating progressively more of it over time.
If your character had "trained" for this lactose-consuming feat, and ate slowly enough that their stomach never over-filled, then sure, they could eat as much ice cream as they wanted without ill effect.
Let's say a character with some sort of crazy hearing/sensory enhancements has the ability to pick up on the sound of someone's heart beat. If they had this ability... theoretically, would they be able to hear a heart attack before the person felt it? What would it should like? How much notice would they be able to provide??
Ooh, really good question, anon.
The answer is... potentially.
In order to explain why, we have to talk a little about what hearts sound like to the people who are trained to listen to them.
A healthy heart has 2 sounds per beat- Lub and Dub, also called S1 and S2. You can hear this in your own heart or a friend's if you have a stethoscope (or just an ear you can press against a friend) and listen at one of these locations:
You'll hear a heart that probably sounds like Lub-Dub Lub-Dub Lub-Dub, etc... The Lubs are S1 and the Dubs are S2. One Lub-Dub (S1-S2) cycle is a single heart beat.
But there are other sounds that can be heard if someone has a problem with their heart. For example, if one of the heart's 4 valves has a leak in it, you might hear a "Shhh" sound somewhere between or around the Lub and Dub. Like Lub-Shhh-Dub or Lub-Dub-Shhh. Depending on which part of the chest the "Shhh" sound is audible, you can tell which valve is faulty.
You might also hear an S3 or S4 sound. S3 and S4 are "extra" sounds that occur during the heart cycle. An S3 sound is like a "Uhh" and happens at the end of the Dub (Lub-Dub-Uhh). An S4 sound sounds like a "Buh" and weirdly enough happens before the Lub (Buh-Lub-Dub).
For the purpose of your question what we really want to focus on is that S4 sound. This is a sound that almost universally occurs in the early stages (first 1-3 days) of a heart attack.
See, the S4 sound is the sound of the top of the heart (atrium) straining as it tries to push blood into a damaged, overgrown, or swollen lower part of the heart (ventricle). Since heart attacks cause damage to the ventricle(s), you get this sound pretty soon after the damage starts occurring. You can even tell where the damage is in the heart (left or right) by where on the chest you hear the S4 most clearly.
But since heart attacks are not the only reason for damage to the ventricle, hearing an S4 sound does necessarily mean that a heart attack is currently occurring. It could have been that the person has had a heart attack in the past and they have scarring on their ventricle(s). It could also mean that they have had high blood pressure for a long time and their left ventricle is bigger and stiffer than it is supposed to be. It could be that they have heart failure and there is more pressure in their ventricles than there should be. It could be that they had an infection in their heart that left scarring in the past. It could be a problem they were born with.
Since these are all chronic problems, what your character would have to notice is a sudden start of an S4, probably combined with other symptoms. When the S4 sound starts, these symptoms might not be the "classic" heart attack symptoms yet. They might be feeling "off" or more out of breath than usual, or more tired than usual, or they might have some mild nausea or indigestion.
Your character might be able to provide at least a few hours of notice before the more classic symptoms show up.
Announcing MEDLEY: A Medical Primer for Writers (Summer Edition)
Are you a writer?
Do you need to know things about medicine for your fiction works?
Have you considered taking a 100% online class about it?
Starting Tuesday, June 4th (7PM) and running for 9 weeks is MEDLEY.
Topics include:
WEEK 1: (US) Hospitals and the People Who Work in Them
WEEK 2: The Physical Exam
WEEK 3: Codes and ACLS
WEEK 4: Remote and Improvised Medicine 1
WEEK 5: Remote and Improvised Medicine 2
WEEK 6: Recovery and Aftermath
WEEK 7: Historical Medicine
WEEK 8: Mental Healthcare
WEEK 9: Bonus Episode
This is the second time I'm running this course so hopefully the kinks are nice and ironed out this time.
Price is $36 per person ($4/week). Recordings of the lectures are available for a month after the last week of the course, so you don't have to watch live.
Is it possible for someone to pass out in mild freezing weather in just pajamas and develop frost bite bad enough to impair their hands and feet? How long would they be unable to walk or use their hands fully?
Probably not.
As you can see in this table, even at 10F (-12C) it takes well over 2 hours no matter how much wind there is to get even some frostbite, so mildly freezing temperatures probably wouldn't cut it.
Hypothermia, however, is a lot easier to get. Your character can get that with 40F and a drizzle.
Is the whole "sucking poison out of a wound"-thing entirely fictional or is there some truth behind it?
This was a real recommendation in the mid-1900s, but it has been found to not work very well and probably do more harm than good.
It does not seem like sucking the venom out of a wound is particularly helpful. Or at least, not helpful enough to negate the risks associated with making a wound (most references that talk about sucking venom out of the wound also want you to cut across the wound) and then exposing the caregiver to blood against mucous membranes, which could transmit blood borne infections.
This cutting and then sucking venom extraction method seems to have been popular in the 1970s, but by the late 1980s it had gone out of favor. Today we use compression wraps to slow the spread of the venom instead.
hello! can a parent stay in hospital with their (pre-school aged) child? even overnight? i imagine it might differ depending on each hospital's policy maybe?
It would depend on the hospital's policy, but most hospitals have gone back to 24/7 visitation where I am so I'd say, especially for a kid, that would most likely be allowed.
The thing is that most hospitals where I am don't do a lot to support visitors staying with family, so at most this parent would get a recliner. Maybe a cot. But they wouldn't get a bed or anything, and would have to go home to do things like shower. And if it's a 2-person room the total number of visitors may be very limited due to space.
I don't wanna nag but the fandom posts are still happening haha maybe it's the queue?
We've checked and unfortunately that's not the issue. We're working to resolve it as quickly as possible, and have reached out to the misplaced poster.
We've brought back some old favorites/ popular prompts from last year with a healthy dash of new!
Please feel free to participate with original or fan works of any kind (writing, photos, gifs, mood boards, videos, songs, whatever creative medium your heart desires!). You can do one or all of the prompts on any given day, and if none are to your liking, check out the alternate prompts!
Two rules this year!
As with last year, tag your stuff with appropriate warnings, plzkthnx.
AI-created content is highly discouraged and frowned upon. I have no way of "checking", but I respect the time and effort people put into their crafts and encourage everyone to do the same. This isn't a contest for best written or prettiest art — it's a challenge, so challenge yourself.
Text list below the cut for easier crossings-off. And don't forget to tag @juneofdoom so I can reblog your awesome here! Have fun!
“Help me.”
| Failed Escape | On the Run | Fetal Position |
“It didn’t have to be this way.”
| Scream | Double Cross | Made to Watch |
Any media form is allowed (art, fic, gifs, music, whatever).
You can participate however much or as little as you want, no pressure to complete every single day.
You can post your work anywhere on the internet, Tumblr, Ao3, etc.
Tag potential triggers and NSFW accordingly.
If you want to be counted as an official participant and have the chance to be featured on the blog, post your content during the month of April. You can still use the prompt list after April ends.
I can’t guarantee that every single work will be featured but I’ll try to reblog as many as I can.
To increase your chances of being featured here, tag your post with the event name and the prompt of the day that you used (For example: #whumpril2024, #whumprilday1, #limp)
You can also @ the blog, @whumpril.
Full write-up of the prompts can be found under the cut!
Whumpril 2024 Prompts:
Limp
Sweat
Shame
Swaying
Reckless
Dizziness
Hesitation
Bloodshot
Self-Doubt
Adrenaline
Can’t Sleep
Weak Pulse
Angry Tears
Urgent Care
Mind Games
Coughing Fit
Hallucination
Broken Glass
“I need you.”
Touch Starved
“Just hold on.”
Stoicism Breaks
Presumed Dead
No Time to Rest
“Brace yourself.”
“How could you?”
“Please don’t go.”
Fight/Flight/Freeze
Reluctant Caretaker
“We’re out of time.”
Alternative Prompts:
If there’s a prompt above you don’t feel inspired or comfortable doing, you can switch it out with one of these alternatives!
What’s the exact difference between unconsciousness and coma? Can someone lie unconscious for a long period of time, even seen by visitors, and not be considered comatose?
Unconsciousness is an umbrella term for a state in which someone is not aware of their surroundings and is unable to respond to stimuli, such as talking or pain. There are different types of unconsciousness that fall under that umbrella.
The Glasgow Coma Scale is what medical professionals use to measure consciousness. It has 3 parts:
The number next to the response indicates the number of points someone gets for each category. For example, someone who opens their eyes to someone talking to them (3 points), can talk but is confused (4 points), and can obey commands like "squeeze my hand" (6 points) would score a 13.
To be considered unconscious, someone has to score 8 or less.
Coma is any period of unconsciousness lasting 6 or more hours.
this time around i want to ask about this: in movies, sometimes a character would be knocked unconscious by getting a part of their neck pinched. what part is it? the carotid artery or some nerve? im asking because something like that happens in my wip and i wanted it to be more accurate
Unfortunately, the Vulcan Nerve Pinch is not a real thing.
It was made up by Leonard Nimoy in 1968 because Spock needed a better way of knocking Kirk out than hitting him over the head with a phaser (one might ask, if he had the phaser, could he not just...). It was then repeated in a lot of other media because it was cool.
Anyway, the closest IRL thing to the VNP is to hit someone really hard in the carotid sinus. This is the spot where the carotid artery splits into two. It contains receptors called baroreceptors, which monitor blood pressure. Hitting baroreceptors really hard in some people will falsely make the body believe that blood pressure is too high and drastically lower blood pressure momentarily, causing dizziness or unconsciousness. This will not last very long (like, in the realm of seconds).
There's a 2007 lit review by Langlois in the journal Forensic Science, Medicine, and Pathology on the topic, so I'm happy to share with bruise anon:
- Blue, green, black, red, etc aren't good indicators of a bruise's age. These colors may all show up for various chemical reasons throughout the healing process. However combined with other observations such as tenderness (the area is painful to touch) they might be of some use.
- The exception is bright yellow, which only shows up when the hemoglobin starts to degrade, producing bilirubin. This may be masked by other colors in the bruise or by darker skin.
- It's not well known when bruises start turning yellow. Some studies have observed as early as 18 hours but on average about 48-72 hours.
- Some factors that might affect the appearance of a bruise include: type of object (fast objects bruise more than slow, squared edges bruise more than rounded edges), location (bony areas such as the face bruise more than the abdomen), age of the victim (most observations on how bruises heal have been done on adults and not children), blood clotting disorders, certain vitamin deficiencies, specific medications, history of injury (repeated bruises in the same location heal faster)
- Recently there have been efforts to use alternative light sources such as UV to detect bruises that might not be visible yet. This has been a really big deal for medical professionals who work with victims of violent crimes
I had to look at this article recently for a work task so I am happy to share!
Thanks for sharing
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