History Main / LethalDiagnosis

* In the movie ''Film/{{Brazil}}'', our first view of Mrs. Terrain has her with a few bandages due to a "complication" with treatment to make her look younger. Throughout the course of the movie her condition worsens despite her doctor's insistence that she'll soon be up and about, and in one of the dream sequences we see her coffin, which turns out to contain nothing but bones and [[{{Squick}} something that looks unpleasantly like]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspic aspic.]]

* ''Series/{{Orange is the New Black}}'': Rosa, who mentions in the first episode she has cancer, is told in the second season that chemotherapy isn't working and she has only weeks left to live. [[spoiler: This is a huge factor in her decision to escape in the second season's final episode.]]

** Several cancers have a similar course, based on how late in the game symptoms arrive, but even pancreatic cancer has a non-zero survivability. The true kings of this trope are the prion diseases. Prions are renegade proteins that usually arise spontaneously in the brain, then transform other copies of the protein in the "bad" form. Symptoms usually only show up once a patient has a year of agony and increasing dementia to look forward to. The survivability is zero and there is nothing to slow the progression (even HIV can be treated). Neither Alzheimer's Dementia nor Huntington's has so rapid and terrible a progression. Prion diseases are mercifully rare, but given their gravity, fears of "Mad Cow" were not entirely groundless.

[[folder: Opera ]]

* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': 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.

* ''LaBoheme'' has a bizarre self-fulfilling diagnosis when Mimi overhears Rodolfo telling a friend that she is dying.

* ''Film/TheAdventuresOfBaronMunchausen'' has the [=titular=] character AfraidOfDoctors in a GenreSavvy way.

* Walt in ''GranTorino''. Sure, he was CoughingUpBlood 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. [[spoiler: Of course, he is gunned down before his condition can kill him.]]

[[AC:{{Fanfics}}]]

[[AC:{{Film}}]]

[[AC:LiveActionTV]]

[[AC:Opera]]

[[AC:VideoGames]]

[[AC:WesternAnimation]]

[[AC:RealLife]]

* Walt in ''GranTorino''. Sure, he was CoughingUpBlood 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.

* StephenKing's autobiography/memoir/how-to ''On Writing'' describes how his mother got hospitalized and died very suddenly of uterine cancer... because [[JustifiedTrope she'd been actively hiding her developing symptoms for fear of causing a fuss]]. She'd actually been sick for a long time.

* 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.

* Exception: In the first few minutes of the new ''Series/{{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).

** [[http://www.webmd.com Web MD]] has a similar problem. For virtually any symptom you enter, you can be nearly certain that cancer or syphilis will show up in your list of possible diagnoses.

** The UK's NHS Direct helpline occasionally tosses this up - although patients are told ''not'' to use it for anything that feels really unpleasant. Unfortunately, because the people on the other end can't see the patient, they frequently err on the side of caution and send people to A&E for minor problems.

* ''Series/{{Orangeisthenewblack}}'': Rosa, who mentions in the first episode she has cancer, is told in the second season that chemotherapy isn't working and she has only weeks left to live. [[spoiler: This is a huge factor in her decision to escape in the second season's final episode.]]

* ''Series/Orangeisthenewblack'': Rosa, who mentions in the first episode she has cancer, is told in the second season that chemotherapy isn't working and she has only weeks left to live. [[spoiler: This is a huge factor in her decision to escape in the second season's final episode.]]

* ''Series/Orangeisthenewblack'' Rosa, who mentions in the first episode she has cancer, is told in the second season that chemotherapy isn't working and she has only weeks left to live. [[spoiler: This is a huge factor in her decision to escape in the second season's final episode.]]

* The entire basis behind ''Series/BreakingBad'' is Walter's diagnosis with cancer, which begins his [[ProtagonistJourneyToVillain downward spiral.]]

* FindingNeverland - 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.

* LaBoheme has a bizarre self-fulfilling diagnosis when Mimi overhears Rodolfo telling a friend that she is dying.

* VideoGame/TraumaTeam has the diagnosis episodes. Redoing the diagnosis as new symptoms show up is even part of the gameplay.

* Every episode of ''Series/{{House}}''. Every time the team comes up with a theory, the patient's condition instantly escalates to point of unerring predictability.
** [[JustifiedTrope 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.

* Subverted in an episode of ''GilligansIsland'' where everyone mistakes a harmless bug that landed on Gilligan for a bug with deadly venom. He shows all of the symptoms to everyone else, but there's a logical explanation: for example: Gilligan was just eating a bunch of bananas, so when Ginger offered him pie, he didn't want any. Everybody else thought this was a lack of appetite, one of the symptoms.

* The entire basis behind ''BreakingBad'' is Walter's diagnosis with cancer, which begins his downward spiral

* The entire basis behind Breaking Bad is Walter's diagnosis with cancer, which begins his downward spiral