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Lethal Diagnosis: Difference between revisions
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== [[Film]] ==
* In the movie ''[[Brazil (
* Walt in ''[[Gran Torino]]''. Sure, he was [[Coughing Up Blood]] anyway, but one gathers he was suffering with that for a long time before he went to see the doctor about it. Walt is never seen to get any worse, however his prognosis is pretty grim, by the way he suddenly tries to reach out to his 'good-for-nothing' son. Oddly, one never sees him deteriorate beyond that gruesome cough, from which he always quickly recovers.
* [[Finding Neverland]] - where the reason for Sylvia's coughs is not revealed until late because she kept refusing to get treatment or act like anything was going wrong.
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* Mark's dad in ''[[
* Joyce Summers in ''[[
** Can be [[Truth in Television]]. Plenty of people never even manage to get the diagnosis before they lose it.
* A seemingly-healthy character in ''[[Scrubs]]'' comes in to the hospital because of a health scare on the news. After he coughs heavily they perform a chest x-ray and it is revealed he has lung cancer and dies within a few days.
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** Subverted, however, by Ben Sullivan (portrayed by Brendon Fraser)--Dr. Cox's best friend and ex-brother-in-law. In the first episode he was in, he was diagnosed with leukemia. He really didn't show any symptoms beyond an inability for his blood to congeal. In the third episode he's in, a year after his first appearance, he appears healthy but hasn't been seeing his oncologist for some time. Dr. Cox insists he get a workup and restart his treatments, but he dies twenty minutes after Dr. Cox goes off to run some errands for his son's birthday party.
* Exception: In the first few minutes of the new ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined]]'' mini series president-to-be Laura Roslin is diagnosed with terminal cancer, but the character proceeds to play a major role in the following TV serial without all the stereotypical signs of disease (and, on the whole, survives a lot longer than most who befall TV illness).
* Every episode of ''[[House (TV series)|House]]''. Every time the team comes up with a theory, the patient's condition instantly escalates to point of unerring predictability.
** [[Justified Trope|That's almost entirely to do with]] the fact that the diagnosis is always ''wrong'' until the end of the show when they finally figure it out. Considering House's radical treatments, the diagnosis itself actually can make them worse. The number of times they give immunosuppressant steroids to people who end up having infections thinking they have some autoimmune disorder is amazing.
** This is [[Played With]] in one episode where a woman comes in with a mild cough, which almost immidiately is revealed to be a particularly nasty form of lung cancer. Instead of informing the woman of her diagnosis, Cameron insistently denies the results, trying to come up with a less serious explanation. When she finally gives in and informs the woman that she only has weeks to live, she repeats that she just has a cough - and the viewer never sees her again.
* Subverted in an episode of ''[[
* [[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]: Odo has been the carrier for the disease destroying his people for a long time without effect. Once this information is revealed, he's deteriorating rapidly within only a few episodes. This is handwaved in-verse with the explanation that the disease gains strength with increased use of shapeshifting and the excessive amount of shapeshifting Odo has had to do over a short space of time has massively escalated his condition. Still, it's only excessive shapeshifting by his standards and it wasn't like he didn't shapeshift prior to them... and it still affects him faster than it affects the rest of his people who shapeshift much more frequently on a long-term basis than he does.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* In the ''[[Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy]]'' episode "A Case of Ed", Edd becomes convinced he has the rare (and presumably deadly) Lackadaisycathro Disease, and almost immediately becomes pallid and feverish.
* Claude Cat in the ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' short "The Hypochondri-cat" was such a hypochondriac that even [[Induced Hypochondria|mentioning to him that he looked a little green]] would cause him to instantly turn that color. This reaction was played strictly for humor.
* Parodied in ''[[South Park]]''; in "Bloody Mary", upon being told that his alcoholism is a disease, Stan's father shaves his head, confines himself to a wheelchair, and speaks exclusively in a harsh whisper.
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