I haven't been sleeping well.
My throat feels weird - not painful, just weird.
Monday morning I finally sucked up my - pride, paranoia, hatred of illness, whatever - and went to the doctor for what's become an increasingly annoying recurrent dry cough over the last three years.
So far I've gotten two different codeine-containing cough syrups, an albuterol inhaler, a spirometry test, a chest X-ray, and an appointment for a tuberculin skin test tomorrow. The scientist in me is saying, Good, let's get to the bottom of this. The [im]patient in me is wailing, What la, I don't have TB or asthma, I just want my throat to stop being itchy!
I've always had a somewhat personal interest in tuberculosis - starting with my father's partial deafness. He contracted TB as a small child in Macau, where my Kuomintang general grandfather had taken refuge from the Communists. It seems like at the time, the antibiotic streptomycin was one of the drugs available to treat TB (it's now a second-line drug against strains that are resistant to more commonly used TB drugs). Unfortunately, it can also make you deaf. There went about an ear and a half's worth of hearing ability.
Then later, my BCG booster vaccination in Year Six was more memorable than most twelve-year-olds because I was born in Singapore, where they jab babies in the butt (instead of in the left shoulder like Malaysia), and was forced to explain to the school nurse why I couldn't show her my infant vaccination scar...
Also, my lesion took at least three months. We had a church camp in Port Dickson during that period. Let me tell you, trying to heal an oozing, pus-filled blister isn't compatible with swimming at the seaside.
To add insult to injury, when my family first went to the US together about a year and a half later, my tuberculin skin test came out positive (probably due to the BCG!) and I had to take isoniazid pills for six months, just in case I did have an M. tuberculosis infection. You can't win.
Later I was whining about my anticipated skin test, because I'm scared it's going to come out positive again...
me: I don't wanna have to take drugs for six months again!
Steve: Girl, I don't wanna have to take drugs for six months either.
me: Ooh, good point.
Steve: I should set an ultimatum - give me five serious diseases and I'll dump you.
me: I only gave you mono!
Steve: That's it! I'm declaring a moratorium on dating virologists.
Also, I recently attended a talk on Mycobacterium genomics where the [Egyptian] professor said about this photo of Andrew Speaker: 
"I don't know why his wife is wearing a respirator but he isn't, unless they are playing some kind of Arabian Nights thing." And he put up his version which looked like this: 
Labels: disease
