Medical conditions that require long hospital stays
I swear my google fu has never failed me so bad before ...
My story is set today in Germany.
The question is simple enough: I'm working on an idea where two characters (teenagers) meet in an hospital as patients. So far so good.
All I need are plausible medical conditions that require long hospital stays BUT don't render someone completely immobile/barely conscious (like a coma wouldn't work for obvious reasons).
Of course I googled "long term illness", "long hospital stay", "chronic illness", "what reasons for long hospital stay?" etc etc but all I got were a dozen hospital websites that didn't really explain wo me what I wanted to know. ;)
My first thought was cancer, so I researched cancer and treatment. But the more I found out the more it seems that people don't stay that long in a hospital aside from the surgeries or during the final stages. I totally thought chemotherapy would have to be stationary but obviously that's not the case?
Anything neurological (craniocerebral injuries, cerebral haemorrhaging etc.) would almost always affect their cognition/consciousness which I don't want, so that's out of the question.
The only thing I found out so far are people waiting for a heart or lung transplants and have to be monitored 24/7 or people with kidney failure who need renal dialysis? Except again I'm not really sure because I already found cases of patients who lived at home and only went for a few hours per day (or per week) to the hospital for dialysis. Does anybody know in which cases hospitalization is required?
So in a nutshell: Are there any plausibel medical conditions, injuries, chronic illnesses or anything that would require long stays at the hospital and a lot of treatement? I'd be really grateful for any kind of help!