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To: dodger

You are so correct.

From the CDC web site:

What is TB?

Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease caused by bacteria called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The bacteria usually attack the lungs. But, TB bacteria can attack any part of the body such as the kidney, spine, and brain. If not treated properly, TB disease can be fatal. TB disease was once the leading cause of death in the United States.

TB is spread through the air from one person to another. The bacteria are put into the air when a person with active TB disease of the lungs or throat coughs or sneezes. People nearby may breathe in these bacteria and become infected.


16 posted on 08/23/2005 7:58:15 PM PDT by ChildOfThe60s (If you can remember the 60s......you weren't really there.)
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To: ChildOfThe60s
"TB is spread through the air from one person to another. The bacteria are put into the air when a person with active TB disease of the lungs or throat coughs or sneezes. People nearby may breathe in these bacteria and become infected."

Here's a random but interesting story (I think) about a close encounter with TB and a near-miss blunder of medical practice: I had a very scary encounter with TB three years ago..... I was being treated for a serious bout of cancer in a major NYC hospital.... mostly as an out-patient, but they would destroy my immune system via chemotherapy, and a couple of times I had to be rushed to the ER with a serious fever ("neutropenic fever" they called it), and then admitted as an in-patient so they could put me in isolation and pump me full of major anti-biotics for a week or two.... anyway, one time at 5 am I'm brought from the ER upstairs to a hospital room, and it's not an isolation room (even though I have absolutely no immune system left). The other guy in the room is awake, hacking and coughing and gaggging worse than anything I've ever heard.... after a couple of hours of this I'm ready to scream at someone to get out, figuring that there must be something infectious in the air from all that coughing, when a Doctor comes by, looks at my chart, and rushes out of the room.... I hear all kinds of whispered commotion right out in the hallway, I can tell there's quite a fuss, and then the nurses and orderlies rush in and wheel me right out of there, without anyone saying a word.... now they give me about the most prime room in the hospital, a huge corner room with great window views of the East River and the city and it's a single, only one bed, so now I'm finally in isolation and in probably the best room in the hospital to boot. A little later I'm talking with one of the hospital staff one-on-one, and I ask what the h--- that was all about, why was I put in that other room with an obviously very sick patient when I was supposed to be in isolation due to having no immune system, and how did I now rate the fabulous room that looked like it must be for wealthy private patients paying some huge premium on the usual rates... anyway, I cajoled the real story out of her, swearing never to tell (this is anonymous, so it's OK), and she said that I had just been part of the worst medical blunder she'd ever seen, that the other patient was a late-stage HIV patient dying of AIDS, tuberculosis, and a couple of other things, and that it was the last room in the entire hospital that someone in my condition should have been put into, even temporarily. A doctor/resident making the first round freaked out when she realized what the night staff had done, probably some half-asleep nurse who admitted me without thinking about the charts.... Anyway, I may have breathed lots of TB spores or bacterium, but by this time they had me on IV major major major antibiotics, 3 different ones that I'd never even heard of (the kinds that are supposed to kill just about anything), so I survived (but I assume the other guy didn't).
32 posted on 08/23/2005 9:56:18 PM PDT by Enchante (Kerry's mere nuisances: Marine Barracks '83, WTC '93, Khobar Towers, Embassy Bombs '98, USS Cole!!!)
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