Fun, yeah, although I was by that point too lazy to implement a lot of your suggestions. Not to mention that I still needed the poor schmuck on his feet and snarky for the Great Escape. Alien stimulants were used to gloss over a lot of my errors. Yay for science fiction, which allows us to cheat! *g*

There used to be a Yahoo list peopled by nurses and the occasional insomniac resident which existed for the express purpose of discussing plausible injuries/illnesses to be applied to fanfic characters.

It's still fairly active, it looks like: Fanfic Med. I joined a while back, but went no-mail last year and haven't checked back in yonks. I used to lurk there quite a bit and chortle at the kind of scenarios people come up with (I'm in medicine, yet there were tons of stuff that left me scratching my head.) The answers to the queries are usually pretty decent, but folks still get some stuff wrong, as can be expected.

musket ball or pistol shot to the thigh, only a flesh wound, but made worse than it needs to be when Injuree and Comforter decide to go ahead and dig it out

Yeah, this is feasible as something that could lay the person up with a nasty infection with fevers, delirium, etc. for a few weeks, and from which one can recover without losing the limb unless the infection is severe. The wound would have to be a fairly recent one though. Old bullet wounds/schrapnels *can* cause late infection, but that would usually manifest as an indolent infection like osteomyelitis instead of acute febrile illness.

On erika's query: what Nutty said.

edited because 'would' and 'wound' are not the same things.

I can't believe those same people wouldn't answer your question, Susan... you should join up!

Maybe he sprains an ankle after all

Nah. Someone who leaves the army because of a sprain looks like a sissy. I like the "infected wound from imprecise removal of a musket ball' idea much better.

And I am so completely gleeful that a list exists for such questions.

Nah. Someone who leaves the army because of a sprain looks like a sissy. I like the "infected wound from imprecise removal of a musket ball' idea much better.

The injury that makes him leave the army comes much, much later in the story, and I've already figured out the perfect battle for it to happen in. The one I'm trying to figure out currently is just a temporary thing to get him alone with the heroine for long enough that something can happen between them.

Sorry, Susan -- I misread. I think either injury could work in that case, depending on the circumstances around it.

I think it's funny that I was all proud of writing something with no disability in it(and I did for the last two, but now I'm back home among the maim stories again.) Heh. And I almost typed "huh?" Kay will not be happy till she gives me that habit, huh?

Concussion, sans vomiting?

Heh. I used to be on a (pro) editors' list and someone was looking around for pointers on blood spatter patterns for a project she was editing. A year or so later, I happened across a veeery familiar sounding scene - it turned out that the project this editor was working on was some juicy Krycek slash. I fired off an email to the editor to be sure, and we had a good laugh about the overlapping circles of the internet.

An aquaintace of mine is a forensic policewoman. She often gives lectures to writers at cons, like Baycon, on blood spatters and other detailed things. Complete with slides. Fun to watch the newbies pale and leave the room.