Well I'm Hot Blooded, Check it and See...

[taste_is_sweet]

For them's what might be interested, there is a multi-fandom commentfic meme going on at ariadnes_string's LJ (don't know her, but the woman has good ideas).

This particular meme is all about fevers, which as we all know tend to be awesome in fiction and kind of horrible in real life. (My mom got Dengue fever right after a Habitat for Humanity trip to Haiti many, many years ago, and at one point her poor brain was so fried that she honestly thought she'd been a victim of a voodoo curse. Definitely not fun to witness at the time.)

I've gone through all the comment prompts and read almost all of the finished fic(lets), and I've been grinning like the wicked, H/C junkie fangirl that I am. Except for one little thing that I just don't get.

So far, every writer who's actually said what temperature the suffering, delirious woobie has reached has written it as being no higher than 102 Fahrenheit (about 38.9 Celsius). Now, I've had a fever that high and let me say in no uncertain terms that it sucks balls, but that's nowhere near high enough to cause delirium.

Generally, people don't start hallucinating or thinking they've been cursed until their fever hits 104 F (40 miserable degrees Celsius). Temperatures of 105 (40.5) and up are where you drag your raging teammate outside into the blizzard so you can bury him in snow before the brain and organ damage starts.

Now, it is true that the faster a person's temperature rises, the more likely they are to have febrile seizures. But a normally climbing fever that gets to 102/38.9 will probably make you want to die, but it won't make you see the Grim Reaper and his flying monkeys coming through the window to help you get right on that. There's a good rule-of-thumb chart right here.

Obviously not everyone will react to a higher-than-normal body temperature in the same way, but it still struck me as odd that a temperature 102/38.9 would be considered dangerous. Have any of you guys had different experiences? Am I wrong? Enlighten me, FList! :D (Passes out the Tylenol and Paracetamol.)

Comments

[gottalovev.livejournal.com]

I see 40C way too frequently when taking my son't temperature. He spikes so fast, it's ridiculous. Thank god it generally doesn't stay like that long, though sometimes I had to alternate acetaminophen and ibuprofen every two hours with baths to try and bring him down from more than that. I think he only hallucinated once or it was a fever dream only, hard to say (but he must have been higher, then).

they don't even pull the kids out of school before 38,5C. Heck, if the kid is below that I tell him to buck up and go to school, if he eats or isn't totally apathetic. I consider 102 a 'mild' fever myself. You don't feel so good, sure. Hallucinating? no.

The only time I saw things was with a bad pneumonia, though it was more a fever dream, I got shaken awake and still was a bit in there... tried to explain and I knew I wasn't making sense. I have no idea how much the fever was at that time. bleh. pneumonia. they are a bitch.

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

I feel badly for your kid! (And you--that must be stressful as heck to deal with, especially if it shoots up so fast.)

And wow--I hope I never get pneumonia. :( I'm sorry you had to go through that!

(And icon love! Ryan and Esposito are awesome.)