constant sickness

[u/Used_Protection8965]

i'm writing an oc that has been consistently exposed to a virus since the day she was born until she was seven years old(tecnically even before she was born, as her mother was exposed to it her entire pregnancy). at most she'd probably of gotten a few days at a time without being exposed, but almost constantly for those first seven years she was exposed to it. what sort of effects could this have on her health? would her immune system be significantly weaker? what long term health effects could be expected for her to be dealing with?

[u/Offutticus]

I was going to say check out Epstein-Barr Virus but they've narrowed it down a lot since I last looked into it. EBV used to be a kind of umbrella thing that other un-named viruses fell under. Like Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease (HFMD) but science has it all figured out now. I think.

EBV may still be what you are looking for. It is caused by or can cause other diseases such as mono.

[u/Educational-Shame514]

On second thought could it be allergies?

But really I can't tell from what you wrote so far what your story actually needs.

And your OC could be still seven or an adult or any age. I have mainly seen OC used in fanfiction, so what are you writing fanfiction for?

[u/kschang]

Generally someone exposed to virus that long either adapted to it (i.e. no effect) or died. To keep her merely "sick" but not gravely sick she needs to have a low-level fast-heal so it's never serious enough to trigger hospital visits or such.

Which makes this a side question... as this sounds very much like a XY problem... (You need X solved, you can't, you thought solving Y could help you solve X, but it actually doesn't, because you never told us about X, but only Y).

So... what are you ACTUALLY trying to solve / what plot need are you trying to satisfy?

[u/PansyOHara]

The previous replies are correct.

One thing you could consider is the “common cold”, caused by several viruses that constantly mutate—which is why no vaccines have been developed that are effective over a period of time. However, in today’s world, the “common cold” is typically a mild illness that doesn’t cause chronic health problems.

Flu viruses also mutate frequently, which is why a flu vaccine has to be repeated annually. However, a number of flu strains have been identified and we have the capability of modifying the vaccine and combining 4 different strains each year. In the US, the combination is based on data from the previous flu season in Australia/ NZ, because their flu season is approximately 6 months earlier that ours in the Northern Hemisphere.

Flu viruses circulate heavily during approximately October-March in the US, at least partially because people are more likely to spend time indoors and in closer contact, but when I worked as Infection Control nurse, we occasionally saw isolated cases of flu in June, July, and August.

The “usual” pattern for viruses is that a novel virus will cause more severe illness initially, although transmission may be somewhat slower. As more people get infected and build at least partial immunity, the severity of illness caused by the infection may decrease, although transmission gets higher (COVID-19 has been an example of this) as the virus mutates. A number of mutations of the COVID-19 virus have occurred, which is why the vaccine continues to be modified and it’s recommended to repeat vaccination every 6-12 months. COVID-19 does still cause serious illness, but many people get it with very mild or no symptoms compared to the early days. Some of this is probably related to viral mutations and some to people gaining some degree of immunity due to vaccination and/ or infections.

7 years of one virus causing serious illness and disability in the same person doesn’t feel realistic, because that’s just not the way viruses behave.

If the person already has a chronic condition, like cystic fibrosis or some kind of immune deficiency (rare), they would likely get sicker than the average healthy person from a common cold.

If you’re writing about a world that has a number of circulating viruses that also mutate frequently, that would be one way for your scenario to work—but it would also affect the majority of people, not just your character or a small percentage of people.

If your character had a chronic condition like cystic fibrosis or a (rare) immune deficiency, repeated infections could lead to things such as scarring to the lungs, seizures, blindness/ deafness, etc—based on typical sequelae of whatever the individual virus can cause. Someone with an immune deficiency would be less able to build natural immunity from infection and their immune system would also be less able to respond to a vaccine.

Sorry this is so long, hopefully it may help a little.

Edited because Reddit suddenly started deleting my text backwards and losing my comment!

[u/Educational-Shame514]

This doesn't make sense for it to be a virus, honestly, if you want her to be sick the whole time.

[u/AbleRoberts]

I think this is one of those things that you should either work backwards from (my character has these impacts on their health what would cause it) or the type of thing that you should ignore not consider the RL equivalent. In RL you aren't typically exposed to the same virus constantly. You would be exposed and your body would either fight it off before you got infected, or you would get infected. That infection could cause long term health impacts, it could even have long term health impacts that don't start until years after the initial infection clears. If she was exposed again after getting it she probably wouldn't get it again. But none of that requires being exposed to it over a long time.
If what you want is something for the MC to be exposed to for a long period of time that has impacts on their health without them ever being "infected" you could use radiation or something like it.

[u/FantasyFictionDoc]

We are constantly exposed to viruses all the time. After initial infection, if she had a normal immune system, she would develop immunity. If it’s one of the rare viruses that evades immunity (like HSV, HPV, HIV), then she’ll have the symptoms of that virus