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

[twistedhilarity.livejournal.com]

I know of one person I've ever met who would get hallucinations from a 102 fever. Every other person I know, including myself, seems to feel like crap but that's about it. Heck, the kids and I all had 104 temps from a flu a couple years ago, and we didn't want to move and felt like were were going to freeze to death from shivering, but even that didn't make any of us hallucinate.

I wonder if just a lot of people take so many drugs to keep down the fever that they don't even know what it's like anymore. :-P

[sholio]

I had a fever of about 104 when I had the flu this past winter, and not only did I not hallucinate, I didn't even feel THAT awful. I was just too tired to move. Nor did I feel the urge to bathe myself in ice water to bring my temperature down.

I imagine that people's bodies probably react differently to fevers, so I can't rule out the possibility of a person being delirious at 102, but I suspect that it's just a case of research!fail. Like the hypothermia fic I read awhile back in which the character was near death with a body temperature of 97.

[sgamadison.livejournal.com]

I wrote a story in which a character had a temp of 104.2 and was still coherent and functional (because I was basing this on what had actually happened to me) and I had someone jump all over me for not having the character hospitalized right away. "104--out the door" was what the commentator said to me.

I had to point out I was too stupid to take her advice. :-)

So maybe some people make the temps lower to avoid that sort of crit. I know when I was younger, I was more likely to hallucinate around 103.5 or so...missed a whole day there once as a child!

[ariadnes-string.livejournal.com]

hey *waves* I hope it's okay to drop in--pingback_bot pinged me when you linked to the meme...

But, clearly, this is something I'm fascinated by, and while I have absolutely no desire to police the content of comment fic fills, I have to say I agree with you!

I am the least fever prone person--I don't think I've run a temperature over 103 in my life (hence the fascination, maybe), so I don't know anything about it personally (and my immediate family is the same) but I do know I've never heard of a real life person actually hallucinating at a temp. under 104.

And since our pediatrician's office basically says not to bother them with anything under 104 (barring other issues, like severe sore throat, etc.), that's the cut off I usually use for fic (though as you say, brain damage won't happen under 105/106). So, I do find it somewhat bewildering when people in fics freak out over a temp of 102 or 103....rush people to the emergency room, etc.

That said, I do think that even a low-grade fever can make you extra emotional or give you crazy dreams. And that's usually how I get around the issue in writing--because I do love it when fever can break down barriers to emotions or memories. But those things can happen through fever dreams you can wake up from (as opposed to delirium, which you can't).

But, of course, the great thing about fever is that it's a symptom, not a disease, and so can effect people in idiosyncratic ways. I get totally weepy with any kind of fever, for example, but my older son can still play a mean game of chess with a temp over 102....

I'm tempted to link the excellent rule-of-thumb chart you have up there to the meme--but, like I said, I hate the idea of policing these mostly super casual fills...

anyway--great post!

[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.

[mckaysmonkey.livejournal.com]

You reminded me of a friend I shared a house with as a student, who hallucinated while suffering from the flu - she thought it was the flu-strength Lemsip she'd taken (which is actually supposed to bring down the fever).

Fevah!

[anna-bird.livejournal.com]

Chiming in super late to say that with my weird illness last summer, I didn't have any strange thoughts until I went over 104 degrees. (Of course, I should probably check with A. and my sick journal for that month - damn unreliable feverish thinking!) I was uncomfortable up until then, sure. But when I hit 104.6, things got a little...weird, mentally.

I can completely identify with what I'm going to call your mom's increased paranoia; with that stupid fever I was certain that I was A) going to die and B) going to Fire-and-Suffering-Hell and C) it was all because I enjoy reading gay porn. Seriously. I was fucking dead certain.

And then I got the good sulfa drugs, the end. :D So, no hallucinations, but I definitely felt impaired mentally/paranoiacally. (Hah, that's totally not a word, is it.)

[natsuko1978.livejournal.com]

Still going through posts I missed while I had no net, so thought I would add my tup'pence.

My younger brother was (maybe still is, only now he lives in Australia, so I wouldn't know!) one of those people who got tonsillitis at the drop of a hat, but because he had asthma and later post-viral fatigue syndrome they wouldn't take his tonsils out. Every time he got tonsilitis, without fail, he'd get delirious, even though his temperature never got scary-high. This wasn't just a "little kid" thing - right into his teens and at least up to the point I left home, as far as I know. In our teens, I remember having to *fight* with him once, when Mum left us in the house together so she could go shopping. He was just totally out of it. Maybe the PVF contributed, but there it is.

I, on the other hand, almost never got a fever, no matter how sick I was. (On the other hand, anaesthetic makes me act like I'm drunk and I've failed to recognise my own mother when I've come round before now.)

TL;DR People are individuals and medical generalisations are generalisations. :D As I think you said above.