One of my story characters has cancer. Can someone who knows cancer treatment help me make this realistic?
The character is a girl who was diagnosed w/ cancer when she was a baby and her parent put her up for adoption because they couldn't afford expenses. Doctors thought she was terminal, but she just kept pulling through and made it to 16 yrs. old. Is this realistic? If she really did just keep on truckin' that long, is it realistic that she could be on chemo after all those years? One of my ideas for the story has to do w/ her wearing a wig, so I need to know if anyone can be diagnosed that long before getting chemo. What type of cancer would allow her to live that long w/o dying? Since she is up for adoption, because she has cancer would she be kept in a hospital or a regular adoption facility? I don't mean she was on chemo for 16 years, I mean she started chemo or maybe went on it for a 2nd time if that's possible. Maybe she had a health problem and they didn't want to risk chemo, so they put her on meds for all those years. I need detailed answer here!
Cancer - 8 Answers
Random Answers, Critics, Comments, Opinions :
1 :
no that's not realistic. you can't be on chemo for 16 years, you can only take so much before it starts doing more harm than good.
2 :
If your character has acute lymphocytic leukemia she could in theory have gone thru cancer treatment as a baby and went into remission only to have the cancer reappear as a teenager. It wouldn't be realistic for her parents to put her up for adoption because they couldn't afford the treatment. but it would be possible that they were in a social situation that forced the child protection agency to have her removed from their unsafe home and put into foster care (maybe her parents were drug users or in jail for a crime). Because of their drug use, the parents would forget to give her the medicine or forget to take her to the clinic for treatments. This would cause her to not go into remission until she was put into foster care. Then her parents would realize that they could never provide what she needed and eventually allow the foster parents to adopt her. The years pass and she is adopted and has not seen her parents for years. Then in spite of a long remission she gets sick again when she is a teen. So she has chemo again and loses her hair. Hows that?
3 :
Leukemia is a cancer that affects both children and adults. I have never heard of anyone being on chemo that many years. Chemo does make the hair fall out, so that would be believable. If she was not having any problems, she would not need to be kept in a hospital. With leukemia, you can have a bone marrow transplant and live for years.
4 :
God bless her
5 :
it is possible for her to be in remission that long ..im haveing chemo now and ive been on chemo for 2 years.. its possible to have chemo then stop and start back..
6 :
Looks like a rewrite is in order.
7 :
Yes, it happens that a kid gets leukemia, remission, and then gets leukemia again, or also likely, brain tumor. So you can have your character in remission for many years and then diagnosed again with a brain tumor, or a leukemia relapse. But she cannot have been on an off chemo for 16 years, because it would likely have killed her if her oncologist was incompetent enough to continue it when it clearly had no effect. If you opt for a leukemia, you can have your character have a round of normal dose chemo, her doctor find out it didn't work, a high dose chemo to kill off bone marrow, bone marrow transplant (and the suspense of finding a compatible bone marrow donor, and associated search for the biological parents and siblings if you wish ;) and remission for many years, in which she stays in a normal house/adoption facility, with occasional check-up visits to the hospital. Then you have the brain cancer/returning leukemia diagnosis at 16.
8 :
good luck, check http://www.oncologyzone.com for some stories.....
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