Disease that would kill in modern times

Well, you could go for a straightforward infection - maybe the child is bitten by a dog/rat/bat/squirrel and contracts rabies. Only problem is that the kid would be dead in a matter of days.

You could also go for something like MRSA, VRSA, C. difficile (causes v.v. bad diarrhoea, dehydration).

Or (depending on the child's history) you could give them something like measles or the flu. Maybe the parents are ultra-religious and/or don't like giving their kids inoculations.

Also, depending on where the child lives, tetanus, typhoid and cholera are all potentially fatal. If the setting is a third-world country (and possibly even if it isn't), the kid could have been born HIV+ and contract pneumonia (or similar). thus dying of an AIDS-related illness.

Enough?

Million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.

A child that age could get encephalitis. Or just a really bad infection they can't find the right antibioticum for until it's too late. Maybe malaria? The kid also could have eaten poison that destroyed his kidneys or liver.

Bacterial meningitis.

If your child was admitted into hospital for something else i.e. tonsils out, apendectomy etc it's very possible for them to contract MRSA or VRSA.

What about appendicitis and an infection in the wound, if it needs to be longer than a week or so?

If you want the death as quickly as possible, meningitis.

Can it be bizarre and rare? Because if it can then I have the bizarre and horrible death for you!

http://www.kpho.com/news/14214579/detail.html

Brain-Eating Amoebas! Just as they sound, it's an amoeba that you can (very very rarely) get while swimming that enters your body if you accidently get too much water in your ears or up your nose. It mostly kills the relatively young and male (although people aren't sure if that's because young males are more likely to be goofing off in the water or if they're more susceptible) and can only be found in warm still water (natural water features like ponds and calm lakes, can't survive in treated pools). If you're unlucky enough to become the 7th that's died from this, your only symptoms will be a stiff neck and headaches which means you'll most likely be treated for Meningitis it's too late and your brain shuts down.

A kinda horrible way to die and a rare one, but something that may be interesting to write about as the parents of the young person would think that the disease killing their child was a treatable one until it was far too late.

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Thanks, everyone, right now I'm leaning towards meningitis or appendicitis with complications... I can't believe I didn't think of meningitis earlier, we watched a video in Bio last year all about how horrible it is. (Dying in less than a month is fine, I just didn't want it to be a disease that can drag on for years.) Ooh, appendicitis would actually be cool, because this girl has a twin and I can so imagine the twin getting intensely worried about her own appendix bursting, because she thinks that if they're twins they've got to be exactly the same...

Brain eating amoebas would be intensely cool. But honestly, if my first reaction to them is to snicker, my characters aren't going to take this nearly as seriously as they need to... xD

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Actually, leukemia often has a very sudden onset. My dad had a sore throat all summer, and then when it didn't go away he had some tests done found out that he had leukemia and that there was only a 25% chance of survival. It's probably one of the most sudden of the cancers, although I can't say I'm an expert in the lymphocytic variety that kids usually get.

xD

At any rate, meningitis or appendicitis sounds good to me. I'd be careful with the former, though, because non-viral or -bacterial cases of meningitis usually have medical causes, which would mean that the kid probably would have to have previous medical issues, and viral or bacterial cases might cause a meningitis scare.

Actually, leukemia often has a very sudden onset. My dad had a sore throat all summer, and then when it didn't go away he had some tests done found out that he had leukemia and that there was only a 25% chance of survival. It's probably one of the most sudden of the cancers, although I can't say I'm an expert in the lymphocytic variety that kids usually get.

xD

At any rate, meningitis or appendicitis sounds good to me. I'd be careful with the former, though, because non-viral or -bacterial cases of meningitis usually have medical causes, which would mean that the kid probably would have to have previous medical issues, and viral or bacterial cases might cause a meningitis scare.

maybe his mother had HIV, and now he's finally developing AIDs.

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Honestly? In a child closer to 6 or 7, most normal diseases can kill with complications because their immune systems aren't fully developed. You don't need to use something rare and unlikely if it doesn't work with your story, pretty much every garden variety disease can kill a kid if it gets complicated....

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You could always go with STAPH. CNN.com and MSNBC.com are all over that right now. Good research!

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Diarrhea, if it's set in a third-world country, or if the child has malnutrition. It kills more children in the world, in modern day, than anything else, just because people don't know how to treat it.

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I agree re: leukemia...I would have thought it would be long and drawn-out, but there's a blogger who lost her 9 year-old daughter within a couple of weeks to leukemia...her blog is at hannahbearski.blogspot.com

This happened about 18 months ago, so you'd have to go back to the beginning to find the entries describing her daughter getting sick, etc.

"Brain eating amoebas would be intensely cool. But honestly, if my first reaction to them is to snicker, my characters aren't going to take this nearly as seriously as they need to... xD"

If you want a less sensational, more clinical term for it, it would be "primary ameobic meningoencephalitis." Much more sinister. Very nasty disease, almost always fatal, difficult to diagnose, even more difficult to treat, kills in days.

Meningitis is the way to go for a quick death. An untreated case of pertussis could kill a child (the bouts of coughing are so severe that it can cause a small child to vomit when the bout is over, leading to malnutrition), but it might take a while. It could work much faster if the child doesn't cough at the doctor's office and the parent doesn't think to mention the characteristic "whooping" sound, leading to an erroneous diagnosis of something much less severe. To echo some previous posters, a serious case of the flu, a staph infection, tuberculosis (the latter two especially if they're antibiotic-resistant), and encephalitis are pretty safe bets. For you, of course, not your character. =D

On amoebas, that could actually work in Florida. We had two people become affected by it recently. Its making alot of people nervous about swimming in lakes.

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hi, there have been cases of children getting e-coli poisoning at fast food restaurants, etc. tragic and awful, fatal if undetected, undiagnosed in time, no? community-acquired mrsa is now a national concern, gaining attention, worth exloring and also probably writing about as mrsa was historically mainly an infection found in and confined to hospitals, nursing homes, institutions and is now developing in the general public, especially among youth, school children, young athletes on teams, etc. best o' luck as you explore ideas.