TB

The nurse is tall and Teutonic, blonde with a head-circling braid remindful of Heidi in the Alps. I fear she might burst into song. She is in her early 30s, a single mother, and she comes from a center that specialized in pediatric urology. Today she is wearing a face mask and struggling into latex gloves that will almost reach her elbows. I ask her why this change in attire. In the past, she has administered the weekly chemo treatment without such accoutrement. “Tuberculosis,” she says, snapping her gloves on. “I’ve got a kid. I can’t afford to take chances.”

She injects about 20 cubic centimeters of BCG (Bacille Calmette-Guerin), a liquid containing a TB culture. It burns and stings and I catch my breath. BCG is a vaccine invented in France and used against tuberculosis. This is my second session and four more, one a week, are scheduled.

Hmm, tuberculosis… No one knows exactly why the treatment works on bladder cancer. The belief is that somehow the TB cells irritate the bladder, thereby producing an autoimmune reaction that adversely affects the invading cells.  Personally, I believe the TB and cancer cells simply don’t like each other much and the former will try to destroy the latter, and vice versa, sort of like warring factions in an African country. We’re not sure why they’re fighting, but there’s a high body count. The BCG treatment worked for me one time some eight months ago, and for a short while my cancer vanished. Three months later it was back again…

Tuberculosis itself is an interesting disease with a history. According to the National Institute of Health, “Evidence of tubercular decay has been found in the spines of Egyptian mummies thousands of years old, and TB was common both in ancient Greece and Imperial Rome. Since that time, scientific advances, including the discovery of the tuberculosis mycobacterium and the development of new drugs and the Bacille Calmette-Guérin vaccine, caused TB to lessen its grip on mankind during some periods of history. However, TB never completely let go. Today, TB remains one of the leading infectious disease killers around the world. Emerging drug-resistant strains of the disease are presenting a new challenge in the ever-changing battle to control and prevent TB.” And, says the World Health Sciences website,

  Someone in the world is infected with TB every second.

  One third of the world’s population is currently infected with TB.

  5-10% of people who are infected with TB (but who are not infected with HIV) become sick or infectious at some time in their life.
Ain’t that just peachy.

On the positive side, a lot of famous people have suffered and/or died of TB, including all three Bronte sisters.  A brief list of sufferers would also include:

	Frederic Bartholdi, French sculptor
	Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish inventor
	Sarah Bernhardt, French actress
	Luigi Boccherini, Italian composer
	Simon Bolivar, Venezuelan revolutionary
	Louis Braille, French inventor
	Anne Bronte, English novelist
	Charlotte Bronte, English novelist
	Emily Bronte, English novelist
	Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet
	Robert Burns, Scottish poet
	John C. Calhoun, American politician
	John Calvin, French theologian
	Albert Camus, French author
	Anders Celsius, Swedish astronomer
	Charles IX, French monarch
	Anton Chekhov, Russian author
	Frederic Chopin, Polish composer
	Stephen Crane, American author
	Eugene Delacroix, French painter
	Fanny Dickens, sister of Charles Dickens
	Marie Duplessis, French courtesan
	Stephen Foster, American composer
	Paul Gauguin, French painter
	Dashiell Hammett, American author
	Henry VII, English monarch
	W. C. Fields, American actor
	Brenda Fricker, Irish actress
	John Henry "Doc" Holliday, American gunslinger
	Washington Irving, American author
	Tom Jones, Welsh singer
	Franz Kafka, Czech author
	Immanuel Kant, German philosopher
	John Keats, English poet
	Maria Faustina Kowalska, Polish saint
	D. H. Lawrence, English author
	Vivien Leigh, English actress
	Louis XIII, French monarch
	Louis XVII, French monarch
	Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand author
	Christy Mathewson, American baseball player
	William Somerset Maugham, English author
	Dmitri Mendeleev, Russian chemist
	Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese revolutionary
	Moliere, French playwright
	James Monroe, American President
	Edvard Munch, Norwegian painter
	Florence Nightingale, English nurse
	Eugene O'Neill, American playwright
	George Orwell, English author
	Niccolo Paganini, Italian composer
	Alexander Pope, English poet
	Gavrilo Princip, Serbian revolutionary
	Henry Purcell, English composer
	Cardinal Richelieu, French clergyman
	Eleanor Roosevelt, American First Lady
	Edmond Rostand, French playwright
	Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Genevan philosopher
	Friedrich Schiller, German author
	Erwin Schrodinger, Austrian physicist
	Sir Walter Scott, Scottish author
	Bernadette Soubirous, French saint
	Baruch Spinoza, Dutch philosopher
	Ringo Starr, English musician
	Alexander Stephens, American politician
	Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish author
	Igor Stravinsky, Russian composer
	Therese of Lisieux, French saint
	Dylan Thomas, Welsh author
	Henry David Thoreau, American author
	Desmond Tutu, South African clergyman
	Georges Vezina, Canadian hockey player
	Voltaire, French philosopher and author
	Carl Maria von Weber, German composer

Oh yes, and Adolf Hitler.

 

When I’m rich and famous, I’ll be able to add my name to the list, right there between Rousseau and Schiller.

 

At last, something to look forward to!