Contracting Multiple Diseases

How does it work when a character contracts multiple diseases? I have a player who has Radiation Sickness and Red Ache. Both are on the Physical Track. If he fails to cure both, does it go 2 steps down the disease track or are they tracked separately? How does it all work?

*reviews rules*

It seems unclear to me. I'm inclined to say "you track them separately". After all, not every affliction even uses the same progression states, it would lead to weird and arbitrary sometimes-stacking if you tried to mix them together. Besides, afflictions are deadly enough as is, you don't *really* need to make them deadlier.

So, if someone has both Radiation Sickness and Red Ache, you track them separately, and apply their penalties separately. A lot of those penalties would be redundant, sure ( you can't be double Nauseous or Staggered, say ), but double sickness means the victim is still in much worse shape. Two diseases means they have twice as many chances to fail saves and progress, and will similarly take longer to recover. That's nasty enough.

I GM this by rolling saves separately for each disease. Multiple diseases means multiple progression states - not a good place to be, because one disease might make saving throws for the second disease more difficult!