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- Jun 27, 2011
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My character is a veteran. He was injured more than 10 years ago by an IED, and he lost his spleen at that time. It was a serious, career-ending injury, but he obviously survived. This was prior to the action of my story.
Now, he is in his late 30s and appears healthy. He enters the hospital with a (relatively) minor injury, and promptly acquires pneumonia. Because he has no spleen, I want to threaten him with septic shock, but he has to survive and be capable of a decent if slow recovery. I feel pretty confident about conveying all that at the level of detail I want, which is not exactly a medical play-by-play.
However, he would have had other injuries at the time of the IED, and I am wondering if, and how, they might complicate things further. For instance, it seems reasonable that he'd have injured his liver (and/or intestines or kidneys?) at the same time, and my research so far shows that he could still have had a good outcome and not needed to have parts of his liver removed or anything. But I assume it would be scarred? Would it? And would that make organ failure more likely now? Is that something his medical team would be noting in his chart? Would it affect his prognosis in a way I could play with? And: If he does have previous healed injuries to other organs, am I making it too unrealistic that he'd survive now? I want the situation to be dire and for his brother to believe he might be dying, but I don't actually want to kill or cripple him.
Now, he is in his late 30s and appears healthy. He enters the hospital with a (relatively) minor injury, and promptly acquires pneumonia. Because he has no spleen, I want to threaten him with septic shock, but he has to survive and be capable of a decent if slow recovery. I feel pretty confident about conveying all that at the level of detail I want, which is not exactly a medical play-by-play.
However, he would have had other injuries at the time of the IED, and I am wondering if, and how, they might complicate things further. For instance, it seems reasonable that he'd have injured his liver (and/or intestines or kidneys?) at the same time, and my research so far shows that he could still have had a good outcome and not needed to have parts of his liver removed or anything. But I assume it would be scarred? Would it? And would that make organ failure more likely now? Is that something his medical team would be noting in his chart? Would it affect his prognosis in a way I could play with? And: If he does have previous healed injuries to other organs, am I making it too unrealistic that he'd survive now? I want the situation to be dire and for his brother to believe he might be dying, but I don't actually want to kill or cripple him.