Here, it's a KIND of open thread, I'm throwing this out for y'all to have fun with...

[anghara]

But it WILL be useful to me. Shortly.

I have compiled a list of diseases, alphabetically speaking, and I'm quite happy with some of the ones I've come up with (try googling Morgellons, if you are in the market for odd...) but there are certain letters which have a dearth of catchily-named and/or truly weird diseases associated with them. I haven't decided whether to cling to my list (all of which is real stuff) or to simply invent a disease and its symptoms for the purposes of my story. It has to be annoying, exotic, or odd - but if it's to be real it also has to be something that people have actually HEARD of, and that makes my ground rather shaky on certain letters. It also cannot be a wholly scientific name - for instance, I can't cop out and go with Opthalmic Anything, because I don't want to have to spell hard words and this IS a YA book.

So. THese are the criteria.

The disease has to have a reasonably catchy and/or descriptive name
The disease has to have a set of symptoms which are obvious, annoying, embarrassing or otherwise noteworthy

Your letters are A, G, H, K, N, Q, R, T, X.

I already have an entry for some of the above, but if anyone comes up with anything better, I'll take it!

Have at it. Do something rash...

Comments

[cicadabug.livejournal.com]

Gout/Gangrene? Narcolepsy?

[anghara.livejournal.com]

Two out of three - I already had GOut and Narcolepsy. But Gout is so associated with cranky old men that I was REALLY hoping for something a little more accessible to the YA audience who haven't yet hit their decrepitude. And while I can do a lot with Narcolepsy, it's like playing with a dormouse...

[ellarien]

Alopecia? (Hairlessness, which is certainly obvious and probably embarrassing.)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

X - Eczema

[eneit.livejournal.com]

I've compiled a list, will email to you rather than put a huge post here. My personal favourite though is a phobia, not a disease:

anatidaephobia which is the fear that somehow, and somewhere you are being watched by a duck.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

Got it - and I may have to rewrite the whole book to get that duck thing in [grin]

[eneit.livejournal.com]

isn't it great? It was dictionary.com's word of the day a while back *g*

[tapinger.livejournal.com]

Too bad it's apparently fictional (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-phob-#Joke_and_fictional_phobias). (From Gary Larson's Far Side, according to Wikipedia.)

[eneit.livejournal.com]

*morphs into duck mode to watch tapinger *

Rofl, I don't know whether its real or fictional, but it's pretty funny either way *g*

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

R is for rosacea, the curse of the Celts (although people get it world-wide -- that's its nickname according to one web site). Its basic symptom is your face is so red all the time, people stop and ask you, "What's wrong with your face?" Yes, I do have it.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Argh. I put together a whole bunch of links to alphabetic disease listings and then lost it when previewing because I thought it has opened in a new window to preview. Argh. Too lazy to do it again, but I found it all with the search keywords "disease" "alphabetical" and "listings".

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

For G, there's always glandular fever, which is what we Brits call mono.

As a former sufferer, I will second the suggestion of rosacea or you could have rubella.

Is quinsey (old name for inflamation of the throat) too archaic? For T there's tetanus.

Disease

[miketo.livejournal.com]

X = xanthism: abnormal or excessive yellowishness. Also see xanthoma, a condition characterized by the formation of yellowish patches or nodules on the skin due to deposition of lipids. Some rather nasty-looking pictures of xanthoma on images.google.com.

Re: Disease

[miketo.livejournal.com]

Addendum: Some potentially worthwhile browsing is available at http://www.mercksource.com/pp/us/cns/cns_home.jsp. Click on Medical Dictionary and then click the letters you want to browse.

Re: Disease

[miketo.livejournal.com]

And upon further reflection, if you don't mind making up diseases, there's always "Xanthism": turning bright yellow after making one too many unfunny puns (a la Piers Anthony "Xanth" series).

Re: Disease

[anghara.livejournal.com]

HEY, I am a punmeister! I resemble that remark! (although I do think I am probably an order of magnitude better than most of the Xanth-level punology...[grin])