We Need To Take Strong Measures To Keep Tb At Bay

When I got tuberculosis, I was 21 years old and had two little girls, ages 5 and 13 months. I had what I thought was the flu and a cough. It was 1944 and my husband was in the Merchant Marines training for sea duty.

I had worked in a restaurant for a man who had TB. He wasn’t supposed to work, but it was hard to get cooks. I got TB after the birth of my second child. I was thin, down to a size 6. It was the Fourth of July and I had to work or lose my job. I hemorraghed and went to the hospital. I was told I had a cavity as big as a 50-cent piece on my lung and if I didn’t get to a sanitarium I would die.

I spent almost four years at Edgecliff Sanitarium in Spokane and my recovery was a miracle. I was in bed for one year before I could even put my feet on the floor. Then they got me up for just a few hours at a time. They treated the tuberculosis by putting air into my lungs with a needle.

We had good care and good doctors at the sanitarium. Most of the people there were young mothers and teenagers. I was away from my children all those years, though they came to visit.

I was discharged in 1947. I was allowed to have my 8-year-old daughter back. She had stayed with her father and grandmother. My 4-year-old was cared for by a good friend who hoped to adopt her when I died! Only I got well and broke her heart when I took my little girl back.

As you may have heard, TB has returned. It was once the country’s leading cause of death, but when they found drugs to cure it, the illness declined. It’s back, especially in poor communities, in prisons, among drug users and AIDS patients. Just this week, Spokane County health officials announced that an EWU student might have tuberculosis.

They have also brought back the drugs that treat the illness, but some of the tuberculosis is resistent. I took those drugs myself in the 1960s and they had some awful side effects.

I’ve written letters to the president, and to our congressmen telling them my story and urging them to make sure people with TB are never allowed in this country. I also suggested that, if necessary, people with TB who can’t be helped with drugs be placed in sanitariums again, to prevent the illness from spreading. We could use some of the buildings in the military bases that are closing.

We can’t be afraid to bring back the old way to cure tuberculosis. It worked for me and many others.

MEMO: Your Turn is a feature of the Wednesday and Saturday Opinion page. To submit a column for consideration, call Rebecca Nappi/459-5496, or Doug Floyd/459-5466.