CRUELTY OF TUBERCULOSIS

After two weeks in Port Moresby General Hospital, the diagnosis has come that I have been infected with tuberculosis.

This has not been unexpected as I was the carer of my son dying of AIDS and TB. Fatherly love made me push some precautions away to a small boy who died in 2002. Perhaps my infection was more recent.

There are two types of tuberculosis. One is in the lungs and causes the sufferer to drown in fluid. The olther is outside the lung and is called extra-pulmonary and does not involve the sufferer coughing germs all over everyone else.

The extra-pulmonary tuberculosis can be transmitted by sputum of a sufferer. It can also pass in infected drink. Instead of passing into the lungs, the bacillus can pass between the outside lining of the lungs.

I recall my son's X-ray in 2002 that showed his lungs to be white the result of fluid that stopped him from breathing.

I have suffered the same in recent weeks to the point that I feared being suffocated at 2.00am in the morning. Breathing is a basic necessity.

My family is no stranger to tuberculosis. I do not tell this story with shame but with certain pride in the fighting spirit of my ancestors.

The story of tuberculosis is the story of empire. Consumption as it was known has been endemic through Europe for hundreds of years.

The family historian tells that great-uncle George was stricken with tuberculosis in 1890 and moved to the drier climate of South Africa where he died at the age of 19.

Sufferers from England tracked to some dry country in the British Empire where the fluid in their lungs would dry. It was certain that the people in those areas were also infected.

My grandfather John Bell Copeland enlisted in World War 1 and was infected with tuberculosis in 1915. Little is written that there was a tuberculosis epidemic in the war that devastated both sides.

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He came home to his wife and several children and gave them the infection too. The children were separated from their parents and placed in a sanitarium in Southern Queensland for two years. My father was 4 years old.

John Bell died in 1925 leaving a widow with a large group of children. With her last money she put them all on a train to Quilpie in dry outback Queensland.

But the passengers objected to a family of coughing people in the carriage and they were promptly placed in the guard van for the last 1000 kilometers.

But the guard also signaled ahead and the family found an angry welcoming committee demanding that they return the way they came. They had no money.

They were allowed to stay on the river bank and banned from coming to town. A kind person gave them a tent and utensils and there they stayed for 5 years. The young children studied by correspondence.

My uncle and father were sent out to work as drovers. Quilpie was the rail head for the cattle stations. My father became a drover at the age of 11 years.

Their pay went to their mother. My father never slept in a house until he came back from the war. He was a big man and learned to fight.

The TB specialist at Port Moresby General Hospital advises that TB medicine became available in 1940. So all family members would have been treated and cured by then.

My father was very strict but would not explain why. He would never drink beer in a hotel as he believed there was tuberculosis in every half-washed glass. He would not let his children swim in public pools.

I have learned much in the past fortnight. On two occasions, I was choking at 2.00am and driven back to the hospital seeking oxygen.

But that was not necessary. Sleeping with head facing a fan had the effect of forcing wind down into the lungs and helping the sufferer to catch breath every moment.

A sufferer will benefit from a ride in a vehicle with head out the window. A friend may help by fanning the mouth.

Advice is that the symptoms will subside after two weeks to be followed by pill-popping 5 times a day every day for six months. A sufferer should be allowed to stay in hospital near oxygen or a fan until symptoms subside.

Many sufferers may seem to backslide because their wantoks do not have the commitment to take them for replacement medicine.

Descendants of the children above quickly made up for lost time. In my father’s family supported by his wife, all children had high school education and several had tertiary qualifications.

They are represented in the legal, education and medical fields, supported by the spouses of the members concerned. They are a long way from the river bank in Quilpie.

As founder of AIDS Holistics, I find that my recent sickness has given me depth of insight into tuberculosis. It is not a disease of lower class. It could be contracted from a person coughing in a bus or a student coughing in a class.

People with HIV/AIDS are very susceptible to infection. Tuberculosis adds massively to their misery.