Dudich Blush
If you thought purple people were just a skin condition or a genetic mutation you'd be wrong. If you thought it was the after affects of possession, or a spirit mimicking a mortal, you'd also be mistaken. This disease claims the young, and often claims them fully. But some survive.
Rare enough to be something you look twice at, common enough that every town's midwife or witch knows someone who has had it, the blush is so rare because of how often people mistake the lantern-mouse bite, and how often those children with it are just assumed tragically dead.
Rare enough to be something you look twice at, common enough that every town's midwife or witch knows someone who has had it, the blush is so rare because of how often people mistake the lantern-mouse bite, and how often those children with it are just assumed tragically dead.
Transmission & Vectors
Spread through the bite of lantern-mice, for adults this is a simple case of seeing spots, and a little light sweating before the bacteria is usually burned through by the immune system. But if a child, or pregnant mother is bitten, the resulting child is born/becomes struck with something much more potent.
Symptoms
The first stage is actually the most toxic, with the combined steps of shortness of breath, extreme body rigor, and the purple discoloration of skin. This condition lasts between 1 and 3 days, with the disease wanting the young creature to be abandoned so that it can be scavenged on and the disease proliferated.
After three days, the rigor leaves, though the patient will always have the purple skin and the shortness of breath after exercise. As they age, their skin will peel and curl, usually along the flat plains, like arms and thighs, though the peeling skin is thin and can be flaked off.
What is harder is that a child that survives the living dead part of the disease is likely to grow with severe vertigo at heights, and very brittle bones.
Treatment
The 'treatment' of the early stages of the childhood disease is simply to force feed them and keep the child hydrated and make sure their airways are kept clear. Obstruction of the airways can actually lead to death, as can starvation or neglect. The teen and adult conditions are just a management and care situation - and some moisturiser for that peeling from an apothecary. The purple skin colouration is here to stay though.
Type
Bacterial
Origin
Natural
Cycle
Chronic, Acquired
Rarity
Rare
Affected Species
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Poor babies :(
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