This is how medical stuff works in Fiction Land.
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Pregnancy and Reproduction
- A woman might be pregnant if she's gaining weight, missing periods, knitting baby clothes, or having Wacky Cravings, especially for pickles and ice cream. Quite often she will definitely be pregnant if she's feeling nauseous or throwing up, especially in the morning, and even more definitely if she says she's not pregnant.
- Remember: No drinking while pregnant. One Drink Will Kill the Baby!
- Condoms often don't work, so even if you used a condom, your partner may still be pregnant.
- Be careful with aliens if you're a dude, you might end up pregnant yourself even though you are a man.
- Warning-side affects of childbirth are screaming and sometimes even death.
- But if you survive, Babies Make Everything Better. Unless you believe that Children Are a Waste.
Illnesses
- The common cold can sometimes be caught by getting cold or wet, depending on whether the writers have Shown Their Work or not. Symptoms include coughing, sneezing, fatigue, fever, sore throat, and, if you have magical powers, these won't work. Often the cures are just boring stuff like rest or waiting. Easy to survive, but often some humorous Chaos Ensues if a major character has a cold.
- After having one's tonsils out in The Tonsillitis Episode, they can have all the ice cream they want.
- Cancer is serious. It will often cause death, depending on the character's role and the work's tone. Especially dangerous for the Littlest Cancer Patient.
- A Soap Opera Disease will often be fatal unless you happen to Find the Cure!.
- S.T.D.'s in fiction have a happen of being very nasty, possibly even invoking Sex Signals Death.
- It's never Lupus.
Symptoms
- Power Incontinence: Quite normal if it's been like that from the beginning, but if it hasn't, it could be a symptom of a Malfunction Malady.
- Sneezing: Often means the same thing as in Real Life.
- Coughing: If it's established as dust or a cold, fine, if not, it could be an Incurable Cough of Death.
- Vomiting: Could be a symptom of anxiety (though this is rare), illness, food poisoning, eating too much or too fast, but if it's a woman, it's probably Morning Sickness. Characters also throw up when they are disgusted or on a rollercoaster.
