1103 PM

Here they go with the unnecessary propaganda again. The airlines don't have contact information on the people on the flights? Yeah they do. They don't have police force across the USA that can locate the folks that may have been exposed? Yeah they do. I suppose announcing it over the airwaves is marginally effective, but, I would think there would be a far more EFFECTIVE Homeland Security mechanism for an exposure such as this. Is there? NO !

The year was 1993. I was an Registered Nurse at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. I was the 'Union Rep' to the unit I-Blue. I reported on to work and began to receive 'report' from an off going RN. We had received a female patient, age 45 years old. Nice lady. The diagnosis was new to me, but, that was never unusual at UMDNJ. We received all kinds of disease issues on this cutting edge cardiac telemetry/step-down/medical/surgical floor. We received the first two cases of that Mouse Virus in New Jersey, it was a retrovirus. The virus was so virulent it was killing people in NYC and this was a man with a high rate tachycardia due to the virus and fever. We got him through it. His daughter was on Peds and she survived it as well. He stated, there was a mouse in the apartment the day before and it must have been in the kitchen.

But, that day in 1993, the patient was a woman and the diagnosis was Multi-Drug Resistant TB. I looked at the reporting nurse and said, what? MTB he said. Multi-Drug Resistance TB. She was in a room without negative pressure and the diagnosis alone required a 'stand' by the floor's Union Rep. Evidently, the admitting physicians saw no reason to place her in an Anti-Room where there were several layers of isolation. I didn't waste time and called the Vice President of Nursing and simply stated, we had a serious TB case and there was insufficient mechanism to protect the staff. She personally got up from her desk as this was the hospital's first extremely resistant TB case, and went to Unit H-Yellow taking one of their 'micro' filtration machines. It was a large square unit that provided a filtration of viruses as well as a negative pressure. She gowned and gloved and put it in the room herself and started the filtrations. It was her responsiblity to protect the staff and it was my place to make sure it happened. That's all.

This bacteria is well known to the medical profession. It is a serious form of TB, very difficult to treat but it is somewhat treatable if the patient takes all their medications, but, in some instances the medicines are as bad as the bacteria if there are co-morbid issues. I remember assessing this woman's lungs. There were irreversible cavities in her lungs because of the bacteria. She sounded cavernous when she breathed.

Yep.

1993. This bacteria is NOT that unknown to the USA. Rare? Depends the city you live. It was not that rare in Newark after we discovered the first case. Oh, well, that is the Bush World of the Culture of Fear.

I guess Bush is trying to prove he knows more about 'health threats' to the American people than those revealed in "Sicko." Ah, but, Georgie, what do you care?

good night.