The healer in my story gave her friend cancer-what now?

So the mc just got new healing powers and used them on her friends. Due to the intensity of the rapid cell regeneration, one of the friends got cancer. Although early detected and the friend no longer has cancer all of teammates are afraid to touch the healer. The problem is I writed myself into a cage and I do not want to start over from the part she got her powers. So can someone help me come up for a way for her teammates to trust in her healing abilites again?

Have a doctor tell them that the alternative was worse.

First of all, congrats on incorporating a problem I've always thought about whenever healing powers have come into play. Second of all, there are several routes you could use to address this issue you've created.

• 1: The healer character could study human anatomy. An example that I can think of: In one of my stories, healing magic requires that the person using it have knowledge of human anatomy in the same way a doctor does, otherwise they could do more damage than good. However that is because the healers are manipulating the bodily functions like regeneration, immune function, etc. I'm not quite sure how your healing character's powers work, but they seem to be similar.

• 2: Your healer could learn to control their powers in a way that would mitigate the damage. They could simply monitor themselves closely and exercise more precise control over the regeneration process invoked by their powers to avoid cancerous growths.
  • I hope that helped.

As for the new cancer patient, how much fantastical stuff is in this world? Could super-powered cancer lead to them mutating? If so, do you worry about offending people by writing that?

You could just keep it for worst case scenarios. If the healer has the genuine possibility of causing cancer it isn't a matter of trust, not relying on them is logical risk assessment. Of course if you've just receive a potentially lethal wound the risk of cancer won't seem so problematic.

Also perhaps the healer has (or learns) the capacity to enhance an individuals immune system (that would certainly work a lot better against disease than simply triggering cellular regeneration) in which case enhancing the immune system while healing ought to remove any cancer cells before they become problematic.

edited 6th Jul '14 4:47:59 PM by aoide12

So I take it magic can't heal cancer?

Actually, that raises a good question- how does healing magic work in this story if it can't affect cancer? Or is it possible, but the healer and the patient are both too put off by this turn of event to attempt it?

Not till the end of the character ark: Milk it for drama.

The use of the godzilla threshold would help here. Have her refuse to use it unless there is no other way, and then throw a bunch of such situations at them.

edited 10th Jul '14 1:55:17 AM by doorhandle