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

[sgamadison.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid they only had glass thermometers, so I'm thinking it was pretty accurate. I was sick a lot as a child, but that was the only case I can think of when I lost time. All my hair fell out as well and when it grew back in, it was curly instead of straight. Weird!

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

O.o

I'm really glad you came out all right! And I hope you like your curly hair. :D

[sgamadison.livejournal.com]

I have a love-hate relationship with my hair. It grows like kudzu in a greenhouse and has become coarser with age. Right now I'm in a loathe-it phase and there is nothing I can do but cut it shorter or grow it out. ;-)