medical causes of low weight; military discharge without benefits

[tamtrible]

I'm trying to work out a scenario for a character's backstory, for a roleplaying game in a near-future US setting. Same character as here. There's some fudge factor because of the near-future part, but if I get something plausible under present-day US circumstances, I should be good overall (though I might want to avoid invoking DADT, as that's

Comments

[thebootyfaerie]

That's what first came to mind - some type of digestive disorder where she can't digest a certain common food and it messes with her absorption of nutrients and calories. Once that food is eliminated, she gets better.

[fjm]

My suggestion too. It's hard to diagnose (I lived with it undiagnosed for thirty years) and you can have a lot of short burst energy, but not much stamina, which might work for your character.

Unless she had access to a good doctor, she could have mid-level celiac all her life and never know. I only found out because I got food poisoning and failed to recover -- almost starving to death.

[tamtrible]

One can have a fairly *mild* case of that, right? Because 1. if she'd been having diarrhea and such her whole life, *somebody* would probably have noticed, and 2. I've got her almost where I want just from bad habits and poverty.

[jarien]

Google search "causes of rapid weight loss".

Celiac disease could result in her losing unhealthy weight, and once she got diagnosed and eating more properly, she could recover well. I've seen this pattern in a few good friends who had a hard time getting the right diagnosis.

Some anti-depressants and anti-seizure medications will also cause severe weight loss.

http://www.ehow.com/about_5316109_medical-causes-rapid-weight-loss.html

And it's a magic universe, you say, what about a curse?

Not much opinion on the military thing, except perhaps he got caught in the fringe of a larger issue? His entire unit did something, like kill their officer or desert or get in a huge bar fight where someone died, etc. Then your guy might not necessarily have been directly involved, but tarred with the same brush anyway.

[tamtrible]

Though, it's not rapid weight loss I need, so much as consistent failure to gain weight.

And I think I can avoid monkeying with poor Marcus any more than I already have, celiac disease will solve my problem.

[lyorn]

Does it have to be a medical condition?

When I think of very thin (BMI < 18) teenagers I knew (who did not have eating disorders), most were just naturally thin (genetics) and had a) just grown a whole lot, or b) they very slow or picky eaters who had to cope with a change in lifestyle that did not accomodate their eating habits. They were also all active, tall, strong for their weight, and filled out to slim but athletic body types in their 20s.

Someone who was malnourished as a young teen is unlikely to be above-average tall, but maybe she just has a lot of growing left to do. When she starts shooting up, that can go along with dangerously low blood pressure, spells of vertigo, and joint aches.

[tamtrible]

She's been at least slightly malnourished her entire life (bad homes of various sorts, in the foster care system). And I'm aiming for "could pass for 12 if she tried" in terms of development.

I think so, for the degree of skinny I want.

[tamtrible]

I'm aiming for unhealthily thin, when she's living on the streets, but normal-thin once she's eating better.

Actually, I have her as pretty short (4'11"), but I want her to get at least a bit taller once she's eating well. Which is part of why I'm going for delayed puberty, afaik girls don't usually grow much after they really hit puberty.

[lookninjas]

It depends on how unhealthy you want her to be, and how much you want to stunt her sexual development. When I was sixteen, I was underweight to the point where my period was not gone, but severely irregular -- I had it about four times a year, for maybe two or three days each time. There was no real illness to blame: I just had a fast metabolism, which I kind of knew but didn't pay much attention to, and not a lot of supervision at home. I'd skip breakfast, eat a candy bar or two for lunch, and then come home and make myself a big pot of spaghetti noodles and call it dinner. I was getting enough calories to keep myself going, and I wasn't fainting every two minutes or anything, but it really wasn't healthy in any way, shape, or form.

Bear in mind that I was living at home, with access to things like milk and eggs, and usually two or three real dinners a week, if my mom got home in time to cook and I wasn't away at play practice or track practice. Had I been entirely on my own, I could have done myself real damage, just by being

[tamtrible]

carelessness, plus the lack of actual cooking facilities that being homeless tends to lead to, could get me *most* of the way to where I want to go. I may go with a parasite to tip the balance.

[azalaea]

Take "carelessness" one stage further and essentially you have got an eating disorder. There's more than one way to have one, or at least, to have psychological problems with food. You wouldn't necessarily need a label, but Food Avoidance Emotional Disorder, for example, doesn't involve a negative body image or a preoccupation with losing weight. It's rather that eating itself is a source of stress.

If she'd had bad experiences in the foster home, and if she had later learned to deal with food scarcity by getting really good at repressing/ignoring hunger she could have then got to the point where it's difficult to respond to hunger normally even when food is available. What with the fact she's neglected in any case, I think she could end up very thin, and it would be treatable in just the way you describe.

[duckgirlie]

I was going to suggest either Crohn's disease or ulceraiting colitis, which are both intestinal disorders.

A friend of mine had colitis for ages, but didn't realise it because the only symptoms he noticed were weight loss and digestive distress (stomach upsets, diarrhea, stuff like that) which he thought was just because of the dodgey water supply we had for ages. He lost loads of weight, but the rest of the symptoms were pretty easy for him to ignore, or just assume were something else.

[chickpeagreen]

I have Crohn's, and when it's flaring up, I lose lots weight very quickly. Crohn's isn't treatable, but the symptoms can be managed. I usually regain most of the weight when I'm feeling better, though, although obviously different bodies will react in different ways.