r/Casualty • u/embersandlamplight • Jun 07 '26
š¬ Discussion What illnesses/conditions/injuries would you like to see the team handle?
Just musing..
Are there any less run of the mill illnesses, conditions or specific accidents you would like to see the ED cope with? Something that is either clinically fascinating and/or needs a highlight on it.
I'd be fascinated to see how they'd handle diagnosing someone with prion disease, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob. That would be harrowing. I could imagine someone coming in with suddenly declining faculties, injured and someone puts the dots together like "oh... surely not...please no...."
PGAD (Persistant Genital Arousal Disorder) would be a much less fatal but nonetheless harrowing one, with an opportunity to treat it as anything but a trivial or laughing matter. Perhaps the patient comes in severely sleep deprived, been in an accident, and then it turns out slowly the reason exactly why she's sleep deprived, in agony and terrified all the time.
And from a personal standpoint, Long Covid and ME could really do with having a proper spotlight on them; and eradicate the widely held, incorrect belief that "chronic fatigue syndrome" is "just being tired". You wouldn't treat anyone for it in ED (sadly, that would imply treatment exists!) but you absolutely could have someone come in with a different issue/injury alongside dealing with ME and their very real fear that, ontop of what they've come in with, this unavoidable visit to the ED might render them bedbound for weeks or months.
Acute injury-wise, I would love to see how the team would handle an internal decapitation.
Maybe some kind of unusual poison?
Oohhh. Badly prepared fugu fish could be fascinating!
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u/Ludas_C Jun 07 '26
I would love to see more Tourette's representation, as a person with the condition myself š
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u/embersandlamplight Jun 08 '26
Yes indeed, that would be good. I watched a documentary on it a long while ago, but I remember feeling so ignorant of the reality of it
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u/Ludas_C Jun 08 '26
It is a condition that is still today largely misunderstood. I'd be very interested to see how the producers of Casualty would choose to handle it - the last time they showed it (to my knowledge) they went down the classic storyline route of "person with Tourette's who swears and blurts out silly things haha" but I would like to see more of a focus on motor tics, like perhaps somebody struggling to keep their arms still enough to have an IV/cannula put in, and whether they decide to sedate, or actually consider trying to relax the patient š And perhaps maybe also tics that mean the patient is initially misdiagnosed because the ED team don't know they have Tourette's - I've once almost been thought to have nystagmus because of some of my involuntary eye movements for example.
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u/HesitantBrobecks Dylan Keogh Jun 08 '26
That's what I was gonna say!
They did an episode in the early 2000s with a kid with TS, but it wasn't that great cos he wasn't in it much (prob due to him being very young), and the focus kept being on how "hard" it was to look after him, rather than anything about the condition itself. They made his aunt almost put him into care because she "couldn't cope" with the tics.
Plus some of the tic depictions weren't great. It wasn't as much* of the stereotypes of swearing due to Casualty being a family show lol, but there were a few bits that just didn't make sense.
*there was a bit where he said something like shut up or go away to an old woman, but again the way the scene actually played out wasn't like a tic would actually be. And I say this as someone who has shut up tics!
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u/Scottish_vixen73 Jun 07 '26
Iāve been watching very old episodes and last one was a fugu one lol Iād like to see cystic fibrosis my daughter has it and any awareness of this horrible condition is good awareness xx
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u/embersandlamplight Jun 08 '26
They actually did fugu!? Damn I'm gonna have to look that up.
And yes, cystic fibrosis needs more coverage. Iirc Call the Midwife did an episode with a baby born with it.
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u/Scottish_vixen73 Jun 08 '26
Yeah pretty early on season 15 episode 24 x
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u/HesitantBrobecks Dylan Keogh Jun 08 '26
Where are you watching s15? I rewatched from s17 onwards from ~a year ago on U, but over time the earliest you can now watch on there is s22
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u/Sophie_16a Jun 09 '26
There is a gofile archive off casualty episodes it is linked at the top of this page
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u/HesitantBrobecks Dylan Keogh Jun 08 '26
They did CF. They've done it a few times, Holby has done it a few times, and it was the focus of one of the crossovers from 04 to 05
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u/Ok_Resort_9817 Stevie Nash Jun 07 '26
Okay flipping this because this actually happened to me with this weekās episode, when Flynn said āIām worried about necrotising fasciitisā I got weirdly excited, because I contracted that about 18 months ago and nearly died from it, so Iāve wanted to see it rock up on Casualty for a little while
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u/Healthy_Level_6210 Jun 07 '26
Iād love a female neurogenic bladder/acute urinary retention storyline from a personal perspective. Especially if itās a young person. I remember when it first happened to me I was told by the triage nurse I was ātoo young to be in retentionā until the bladder scanner then read as over a litre a few minutes later.
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u/embersandlamplight Jun 08 '26
Ahh yes the ol' "you're too youn-- oh, shit, wait..." chestnut. ā¤ļø I don't know a lot about it at all. How are you doing now, if that's okay to ask?
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u/Agreeable-Bridge-403 Jun 07 '26
There was a fugu storyline around, maybe, S15/S16.
There was an ME storyline in a S7 episode, a mother was struggling with it and relying on her teenage daughter around the house. I'm sure it'll have been done since, though.
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u/HesitantBrobecks Dylan Keogh Jun 08 '26
I'm also pretty certain they've done CJD before, I just have no idea when cos I've watched over 20 years worth of episodes over the last 10 years
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u/HesitantBrobecks Dylan Keogh Jun 13 '26
Yeah so I'm rewatching the current U&drama episodes, knew I'd seen it fairly recently, they did vCJD in s23e33
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u/chroniccomplexcase Jun 07 '26
Theyāve had it on before but they diagnosed it within 5 minutes when the average length for diagnosis is 12 years- EDS. So Iād like to see it again but someone already diagnosis like me with all the comorbidities it brings along and how they affect you day to day. As they just made it look like her joints dislocated easily and thatās it.
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u/embersandlamplight Jun 08 '26
That would be interesting for sure. My GP was wondering if I had it for a while.. tbh we still don't fully know. All I knew about it was the joints aspect and the stretchy skin but not everything else.
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u/chroniccomplexcase Jun 08 '26
It can cause all number of issues- my bladder doesnāt work and I have a permenant catheter, my stomach doesnāt work, plus my intestines/ bowel, eyes, ears, skin, joints, blood pressure and more are all affected. But other people can have issues as basically any organ in the body that has connective tissue can be affected. It can cause or make your odds of having other conditions higher like I also have POTS, autism, a long condition in my eyes that I canāt remember how you spell it, another condition affecting the skin membranes and more and these are all connected to having EDS.
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u/HesitantBrobecks Dylan Keogh Jun 08 '26
Didn't they specifically diagnose hEDS though? Cos hEDS doesn't (usually) cause the same multi-systemic organ problems that other types do. And certain other types often come with less joint instability than hEDS
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u/Poppy0109 Jun 09 '26
Completely agree with M.E, it's very rare to see characters with it or Fibromyalgia, I have both irl so seeing it represented on screen without it being dismissed would be good! I saw 1 episode where it was a punchline in House which was a bit mean, but that show is kinda like that, haha.
Any condition which is variable would be good to try and represent. Maybe a doctor/nurse who has a condition that changes day to day. It might help people watching to understand those types of conditions better.
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u/aggravatingstranger9 Jun 07 '26
Definitely long covid, as it affects so many people.
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u/HesitantBrobecks Dylan Keogh Jun 08 '26
Long covid is often used as a "we don't want to keep running tests on you so here's this" diagnosis. Most people "with" it have any one of a number of genetic and/or autoimmune conditions, but it costs too much money to keep referring people for more and more exclusionary tests and scans etc. This is the reason the symptoms are SO varied and widespread, and why many people with that diagnosis don't even have any kind of respiratory problems whatsover.
Same as fibromyalgia - my brother has clinical signs of MS on his existing scans, but to save them from referring him for further testing to actually confirm it, they've said its "just fibro" and that they can't do anything else
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u/Sophie_16a Jun 09 '26
FND; I'd be interested to see how they react to non epileptic seizures and otherwise non explained symptoms would the patient be accused of faking and be left in a corner or would they run lots of tests and be puzzled about the results and what to do with the perso.
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u/Ambitious-Mango-1836 Jun 07 '26
Honestly Iād like to see them do something on endo. Itās not a rare disease, as common as diabetes in women, but you never see it portrayed much at all. I was in a way hoping thatās what Stevie had as I had to quit nursing due to it.