Tuberculosis and Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis sufferers then and now seeks political attention and solidarity, not melancholic or romantic ideals.
**The TB mentions in the writeup is from my personal experience and learning with tuberculosis and drug resistant tuberculosis only.***
But even when the stigma of shame is there and even when tb community is not given attention, In one way or the other you are all, we are all associated with tuberculosis , like we are associated with breathing. But if that ain't shaking our conscience ,by considering the stats, definitely people living with us or next to us are affected by tuberculosis and Drug resistant tuberculosis, someone in the family doesn't want to talk about what they are going through because they do not feel safe to talk about it. We are the same people who celebrate the labour, art, works and stories by the tuberculosis sufferers around the world in history and now; knowingly or unknowingly, but won't keep our loved one close succumbing to the stigma.
For instance existential angst and meloncholy did not kill FRANZ KAFKA. He was suffering from tuberculosis, he wrote letters to MILENA Jesenská, in pain, in suffering. As his disease progressed, his throat became affected by the TB and he could not eat regularly because it was painful. He died from starvation in a sanatorium in Kierling, near Vienna, after admitting himself for treatment there and he died at the age of 40. He kept writing letters to milena, he said“I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.”, always mentions how he longs for love but a part of him knows that he wouldn't make it. Here is a person in pain. He says in a letter to milena "I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.”
He wrote, “I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity." Even today kafka's pain is used for mere aesthetics. But dont you get it! TB made kafka cry! Now before artifying the agony, be angry at what ached him please.
What I mean by this is when you celebrate your people, be it a favorite poet, or someone in your family, a very close person or someone in distant you adore, when you rejoice their talent or even their goodness of heart, also hold the anger against what killed them or is killing them, stop romanticizing what took them away. No!! the pain did not make their art, we could have experienced more of them if we hadn't lost them to pain.
When doctors asked to keep work aside and rest; ANTON CHEKOV sat down to write, completing two of his most famous plays, The Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. When he was at the peak of pain suffering from tb he also wanted to write, the illness might have crushed his plans for what he wanted to do. He was a physician also and must have known his symptoms already, he hid his illness from family and friends, even as his health worsened in the years that followed. And doctors ordered him to reduce his medical work and lifestyle. I read somewhere that his health deteriorated soo bad and towards the end; sorrounded with his people ,he sat up straight and said "I am dying" and died.
Oh and the entire BRONTE family. Tuberculosis killed the entire bronte family, all died from various forms of tuberculosis.
When you quote ALBERT CAMUS , revisiting his works that is apt for the the covid times, do remember that camus suffered from tuberculosis and at the age of 17 he was heart-broken at having to give up his position as goalkeeper on the University of Algiers football team. He suffered relapses of TB throughout his life.
GEORGE ORWELL wrote '1984' when he was struggling with tuberculosis. Science Daily quotes" . “Fever, weight loss and night sweats sent him to the hospital where he underwent ‘collapse therapy,’ a treatment designed to close the dangerous cavities that form in the chests of tuberculosis patients.” Orwell wrote in the book. “The barrel of the ribs was as narrow as that of a skeleton: the legs had shrunk so that the knees were thicker than the thighs, the curvature of the spine was astonishing.”Orwell struggled with health throughout his life, in the cold and damp of Scotland, under the stress of writing, he got worse and worse with tb.
Writer EDGAR ALLAN POE lost members of his family to tuberculosis.
In cool cover pictures and profiles, when you put up a CHARLES BUKOWSKI quote, Know that when Bukowski was about 70 years old, he got seriously ill . He felt bad all year long. He visited all expensive doctors but none could help him. One day he took one of his cats to a vet who looked at Bukowski and immediately said that he has tuberculosis. He got formally diagnosed later. See TB troubled him too.
MAXIM GORKY, suffered frequent bouts of tuberculosis.
Kathleen Mansfield Murry aka KATHERINE MANSFIELD : chronic tuberculosis drained her, deteriotated her health, limited her opportunities and made her cut off from a big part of life. Its said that she had traits which were fatal to the hope of recovery. The shock of the loss of her only brother was extremely severe and may have contributed to neglect of her health it seems .While one part of her fought and rebelled against external restraint or domination, another part embraced "the flight into illness". In a letter she wrote ,"I have discovered the only treatment for consumption. It is not to cut the malade off from life: neither in a sanatorium nor in a land with mild rivers, butter mountains and cream valleys, One is just as bad as the other".
CLAUDIA JONES; feminist, political activist, leader, and journalist. Her education was cut short when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis during her teens – a disease that would plague her throughout her life.
Tuberculosis made poet JOHN KEATS suffer alot too, he lost his mother to tuberculosis. Keats suffered from the same . When first time coughing up blood, he said, "I know the colour of that blood! It is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that colour. That drop of blood is my death warrant. I must die."
In his last letter he said, "Tis the most difficult thing in the world to me to write a letter. My stomach continues so bad, that I feel it worse on opening any book – yet I am much better than I was in Quarantine." In his last days he was coughing up blood and covered in sweat. He said, "Severn—I—lift me up—I am dying—I shall die easy; don't be frightened—be firm, and thank God it has come " and died.
Writer EDITH SONDERGRAN wrote, ' I have a door to all four winds. I have a golden door to the east – for love that never comes, I have a door for day and another for sadness, I have a door for death – that one is always open.”
She died at the young age of 31 after suffering from tuberculosis. When Södergran was a teenager, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. . The only treatments available were fresh air, moderate exercise, and nutritious food. Södergran had already lost her father to the disease two years earlier and she was sent to the same sanatorium where he had died. Edith was an avid letter writer, she wrote an essay advocating for universal suffrage from the TB sanatorium . Södergran’s poetry later became influenced by Nietzche, alongside other Russian poets. On one side her poetry were reduced to the wild dreams of a woman with tuberculosis, she being a poet that reflected on and wrote about the political and societal context those times.
Modernist poet, MANUEL BANDEIRA, spent most of his life suffering from tuberculosis. It has been said "his poetry spits blood". And he is a poet of wit and humor. He convalesced at the sanitarium. Tuberculosis forced him to abandon his dream of becoming an architect.
EUGÈNE DELACROIX, one of the greatest painters, also wrote a series of diaries, on his fears about the progress of tuberculosis, later, he succumbed to the illness.Also,
AMEDEO MODIGLIANI, contracted tuberculosis when he was eleven. Modigliani was spitting blood and burning with fever. The doctors diagnosed him with nephritis. Ten days later, and at age of 28, Modigliani died of tuberculosis. He died in Paris totally penniless
EMILY SHORE suffered from tuberculosis too,. Shore’s journals cover many topics, including natural history, literature, travel, friendship, physiognomy and illness, especially her tuberculosis. she enjoyed many entertainments and excursions, she was frequently admonished to rest or return to her bed. Shore wrote “I did not go out, but as usual Mary pinned me down to the sofa for a long time, which I cannot bear, for it is making me much more of an invalid than I am, or like to be thought.” Shores's cough got worse. She visited the English burial grounds, says " I felt too, as I looked at the crowded tombs, that my own might, not long hence, be amongst them. ‘And here shall I be laid at last,’ I thought. It is the first time such an idea has crossed my mind in any burial ground.” ; she succumbed to her illness soon then. she had written in during her journal when she was ill with tb, “I have written much that I would show only to a very few, and much that I would on no account submit to any human eye. Still, even now, I cannot entirely divest myself of an uncomfortable notion that the whole may some future day, when I am in my grave, be read by some individual.”
Tuberculosis made EDVARD MUNCH's life miserable . When he was only five years old, his mother died from tuberculosis. A few years later, when he was thirteen, his older sister died of tb too.
Writer, poet, editor, translator, thinker and revolutionary LuXun, died of tuberculosis.
The numbers we see on the tb death graph are people, some of your favourite figures, some of your research topics, some of your mere aesthetics, some of your politics, our ideas, muse, our study materials, please be angry at what is killing us who are associated with tuberculosis , be angry at the negligence that kill us. Know that it stayed this long and nothing's changed so much as far as suffering is concerned.
Be angry that people are dying of tuberculosis, drug resistant tuberculosis, be angry that its not fixed yet, that me someone who is on medication for drug resistant tuberculosis had to come up with testimony and updates just to remind that I am losing years to tb. Be very angry that survivors who might still be only getting back to their normalcy after the medication comes forefront to talk about tb more than any governments. Be angry that patients research on their illness and fight medical gaslighting and the system doesn't care unless we produce to capitalism.
Today especially If you sit at a place of privilege and ask us to chill and promote tips to enjoy isolation, know that some people like me yearn to get some sun and not throw up the medicines that keep us alive and try to get back in life, if at all we have the energy to dream.
Use a little of your internet to know tb stories, drug resistant tb stories, its not so tragic if we understand the urgency on why tb community needs attention ,like any others. And tb sufferers and survivors are going to stay; We aren't going anywhere. Even when the mixed attitudes and reactions of melancholic and romantic ideals ,the metaphors, toxic postivity, on one side and hatred, shame on the other tire us.
SUSAN SONTAG has detailed in her book, " IllNESS AS METAPHOR" on different social attitudes with various illnesses, the interpretations , about euphemisms like consumption , long illness, weakness of the lungs about tuberculosis. On how people feared contagion even just talking about it. Maybe even if we try to demystify a stigma today it's going to be replaced with another, but someone will then call them out too and thats where even I see that little teeny tiny dot of hope too.
That when you read Kafka , When you learn intersectionality lessons from Claudia Jones, Gorky 's writing and politics, and maybe orwell's writing shaped your views , or maybe Katherine Mansfield's powerful words moved you ,but there were others whose stories of suffering, survival that we have no account of, even when we know how much tb took away from the famous figures , some of them who also existed couldn't record their pain; hold them close too .
From the very little we know; know that: Camus's friends helped him get through isolation, sending him love, solidarity and goodies. Melania tried to understand Kafka, Chekov's wife and friends were there for him, went on trips with him, hold your loved one close too.
If someone on TB medication or DR TB medication is reading this. - We have better medication now and recovery is possible. TB is curable. There was a time when only treatment by dietotherapy, climatotherapy and symptomatic therapy without antituberculotic drugs were given, it was basically just - staying at some sanatorium if one could afford, then just getting some sunlight, eating good food were the only kind of treatment those times.
TB AND DRUG RESISTANT TUBERCULOSIS, it can affect any any part of the body, the medication and sideffects makes it difficult too. Its horrible but we got this.
Stories of Survivors, support groups of patients, undergoing different regimen, TB activism, organisations that work to end stigma etc are all over the internet, an online search away. I would share some in the comment section too. Please know about tuberculosis , Drug resistant tuberculosis , and if someone wants to talk about their illness in public send them your solidarity, if they aren't ready yet to talk about whatever they are going through, that doesn't make their experience invalid. In a dangerous, ableist environment where eugenics is very alive, one would be in a difficult position to talk about it. Make a space safe enough. To inclusion and accessibility!!!!!
(The pictures are from 2019, on DR TB regimen, In Isolation, so these are timer pictures) 📷😌
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