My year-and-a-half course of INH was long. These days it’s usually six to nine months for the latent form, with four concurrent medications being given for patients with the active disease.
TB is serious stuff, and if not treated it can lead to death. It is second only to HIV/AIDS in diseases caused by a single infectious agent. It kills nearly 2 million people a year, according to the World Health Organization. Fortunately that number is falling slowly. It dropped 41 percent between 1990 and 2011.
Many famous people throughout history have had TB and recovered or perished from it. It killed Kafka and Keats, the Brontës, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Chekhov, Molière, George Orwell. Chopin, Vivien Leigh, and the Singing Brakeman Jimmie Rodgers. Albert Camus and Paul Gauguin were consumptive, but recovered to later die of other things. Cat Stevens got it and made a full recovery, too, and it triggered his spiritual awakening.
So you’ll be in good company if you get it, but I hope you don’t. For more information, contact your health care provider, the Ulster County health department communicable disease division at (845) 340-3090, or visit the state health department website at https://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/communicable/tuberculosis/fact_sheet.htm.
