Spitting something

I’m crook.  I’ve been a little bit crook for a while.  Then I got more crook and lived on paracetamol and Ibuprofen for four days, alternating these wonderful drugs every two hours when I started to shiver and shake like some widgie on a 1950s dance floor.  

     Now I am proper crook.  When I breathe in and out I feel squelching in my lungs like gumboots in mud.  That’s not good.  And I am coughing and spitting something, animal, vegetable, mineral, who knows?  I’m fine, but it could be much worse … if it were 65 years ago.

     I am reading Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis by Helen Bynum.  The prologue is devoted to George Orwell’s battle with pulmonary tuberculosis which ended when he “drowned in his own blood after a severe lung haemorrhage on 21 January, 1950, aged 46, leaving a widow and an adopted son just under 5 years old.”

     How awful.  I never knew Orwell had TB.  I studied Animal Farm and 1984 in year 12 (and re-read both books after school), fascinated with all things relating to totalitarianism and communism (and a few other isms) and stunned by the brilliance of Orwell’s political allegory. 

     However, by his mid-thirties, Orwell suffered periods of ill-health.  As with most conditions, having a compromised immune system to start with made things worse.  Sadly, Orwell was addicted to rollies of “the strongest, coarsest black shag pipe tobacco” which was no help to his lungs, already scarred and desperately trying to rid themselves of gunk.

     In February, 1946, Orwell’s housekeeper found him bleeding from the mouth, that is, haemorrhaging from the lungs.  And he stank, said a friend of Orwell, “it was the rotting lungs you could smell … a sweetish smell of decay.”

     In TB patients, the haemorrhaging occurs as the lungs are permanently scarred and the infection or other infections and viruses eat out the airways and blood vessels.  There was no cure for TB at this time.

     I read all this with horror.  Here was a man at the peak of his literary career following the success of Animal Farm published in August, 1945 and he was slowly dying, rotting from the inside.  And he knew it.

     In 1946 there was hope for Orwell.  The antibiotic, streptomycin, “part of the postwar miracle of modern medicine,” could cure TB.  It wasn’t available in Britain, but through his contacts in the US, Orwell sourced the drug.  Alleluia, he must have thought.

     But Bynum’s prologue reads like a thriller.

     Orwell suffered an allergic reaction to the streptomycin and could not continue the course.

     By the end of 1948, he was in big trouble.  

     He said, “I can’t type much because it tires me too much to sit up at table.” Imagine the horror; a writer who could could think about writing, yet not write.

     Streptomycin was tried again, but his allergic reaction was more severe and the treatment ended.  The unused antibiotic was given to two other patients who recovered from TB. 

     Orwell was on the way out.  He thought he might stay alive longer if he was married.  He wed Sonia Brownell on 13 October, 1949.  But three months later, he had a massive haemorrhage and died alone in his hospital bed.

     Thankfully, I don’t have Orwell’s worries.  But I do have a worry that hasn’t worried me for all the time I’ve been living on TI - on the mainland I have to pay to see a doctor AND to have a script filled.

     It’s like this:  On TI, if you need to see a doctor, you make an appointment if it’s not urgent or if you feel proper crook, you front up to the health centre (which is what I would do in my current state).  There you would see Aunty Maisie in the treatment room.  She would take your obs and then expedite things for you to see the doctor.  On a good day, the doctor would drop in to the treatment room, do a quick consult and write out a script for antibiotics. 

     This would all take place in under an hour. 

     You would then walk the fifty metres to the pharmacy, hand over your script and walk out with your antibiotics. Note, there would be no exchange of money.

     It’s like this in Cairns:  If you are lucky enough to secure a doctor’s appointment within a week, you will need to pay $70.  Yes, $70.  I nearly died when I handed over my credit card in June for a short appointment. 

     The last time I went to a doctor on the mainland and paid, perhaps in the nineties, it cost me $36.

     Never fear.  There is Medicare.  I assumed I’d be reimbursed something in the order of $55.

     I nearly spat blood when I was told $36 would be paid into my bank account.

     How can people afford to go to the doctor on the mainland?  Writing this has brought on a coughing fit.  Excuse me..

     I understand surgeries bulk bill for children’s consultations, but I can’t afford $70.  Oh, God, another coughing fit.

     I could, of course, front up to a medical centre (a twenty-five minute drive away) or the Cairns Base Emergency department and wait six hours to see a doctor.  That's the time Tony had to wait to see a doctor at the Atherton Hospital in January, 2002 when he had pancreatitis.

     And it gets much worse.  You need to pay for scripts here, up to $30!

     In other words, if I want to be proactive about my health to prevent a chest infection, I have to fork out $100.

     I eat well,  exercise, get lots of sleep and I am in my healthy weight range.  I don’t drink and I don’t smoke.  I can't think of anything else to do to mitigate my health losses apart from securing a $100K plus a year job.  Perhaps that’s my downfall.

     I am not arguing for free medical services, just affordable ones.

     People on TI have it too easy!  Another reason why I should have stayed.

     Anyway, I am not going to the doctor because I can’t afford it even if I am proper crook.