The Lung - A Man's Pain and a Woman's Instinct - AN UPDATE

This morning I received a text from CLK that her husband's lung biopsy was positive for tuberculosis (TB)! And they are all praising the Lord for that result. Why are they praising the Lord? As TB is a chronic infectious disease which requires prolonged daily medications. Some of the drugs used are really distasteful. The daily injection can be rather daunting.

Still they praise the Lord because the pleural effusion is not caused by cancer. The therapy for cancer carries much more risks and morbidity and the outcome is usually uncertain depending on the level of spread. At least those TB germs, if not the resistant type, will be amenable to anti-TB treatment regime. The intensive treatment will go on for three months following which a chest X-ray will be taken to evaluate its effects.

On reflection, it is not common for a rather wealthy person to have come down with this infection unless he got it much earlier when his socio-economic situation was not so good. TB is generally a poor man's disease.  However if there are infected people around you, you may be easily infected yourself especially when your immune status is compromised. This makes me think about FK's continuous use of steroid for his sinus!