I saw two nurses murder an elderly patient many years ago

I saw two nurses murder an elderly patient, many years ago when I was a patient in a TB sanatorium.

Phyllis was an old lady on the ward. She was a bit odd. She was one of the patients who was allowed to walk about a little bit. Just to go to the bathroom and toilet, and to eat her meals at the table with the other ambulatory patients. Some patients, of course, had to stay in bed all the time. Bed rest.

Phyllis had a 'thing' about elbows on the table. If anyone rested their elbows on the table at all when they were eating, she would startle the whole ward with her outraged cry of, "Elbows off the table!" I used to marvel at her vehemence about something that surely scarcely mattered.

Phyllis was a smoker. In those days most people smoked. But not, of course, on a ward in a TB hospital! Smoking was not allowed. - Nevertheless Phyllis remained a smoker. Her husband used to bring her cigarettes and Guinness when he came to visit her.

She used to drag her thin, frail body to the bathroom to smoke. - She made of it a smoke-filled den, and liberally decorated its floor with gobbets of phlegm as she coughed repeatedly. A productive cough, you might say...

Most people were pretty terrified of this fragile, loud, bad-tempered, very old lady with the coarse voice and the dirty habits. But I doubt that many would have wished her dead.

I rarely slept much in that hospital. The medication I was taking had a side-effect of severe insomnia. I just used to lie there quietly in bed most nights. There was rarely much going on. It was a medical ward: no operations, no surgery. When the two nurses appeared in the middle of the night they arrived quietly. In those days nurses didn't wear shoes designed to make a din and keep patients awake as some nurses do today. They had evidently, so it seemed to me later, decided to 'deal with' the Phyllis problem.

They removed her from her bed without putting her dressing gown or slippers on and, one on either side of her, linking their elbows in hers, they force-walked the old lady up and down the length of the long ward. Until she was dead. Then they popped her back into bed to find, officially, a little later.

Why didn't you shout, Phyllis? - Maybe you did and I've forgotten. - Maybe you tried to shout but no one heard. Maybe, rendered breathless with the unaccustomed exertion of your death march, you struggled in vain to shout. - "Elbows off!" may silently have rent the air...

Vitamin D is crucial in human immune response to tuberculosis

Medical Xpress reports that Vitamin D is crucial in human immune response to tuberculosis. The researchers "found that T-cells, which are white blood cells that play a central role in immunity, release a protein called interferon-gamma that triggers communication between cells and directs the infected immune cells to attack the invading tuberculosis bacteria. However, this activation requires sufficient levels of vitamin D to be effective."

This important finding stirs very mixed emotions in me. In childhood and adolescence I suffered repeated bouts of pulmonary tuberculosis, after which time I was advised by health professionals to avoid exposing my skin to sunshine in case it reawakened the dormant TB germs. Vitamin D is known as the 'sunshine vitamin'. Clearly, in the light of this research finding (published online today,Oct. 12, in the peer-reviewed journal, Science Translational Medicine) the advice that I was given was completely wrong, and since I followed that advice for a long time, it cannot but have compromised my health. More and more, researchers are reporting the many health benefits that vitamin D bestows on us, and the many disbenefits that are caused by inadequate levels of vitamin D.

The government is failing to act on a plan to tackle tuberculosis as cases of the disease increase.

Ministers accused of failing to act as TB cases grow - Guardian

Extract:

"The government is failing to act on a plan to tackle tuberculosis amid evidence that cases of the disease are rising, according to medical experts. They claim that officials are failing to give priority to controlling the potentially fatal disease in spite of a promise in October 2004 from the chief medical officer that he would aim to cut the number of cases within three years.

In 2005, there was an 11% rise in TB in the UK compared with 2004. In 2006 there was a further increase of 2%, with a total of 8,500 cases. In London, which has the highest number of infections each year, TB cases increased by 11.2% last year. Britain is the only country in western Europe experiencing a sustained rise in TB cases. The British Thoracic Society says nine out of 10 TB specialists believe the number of cases is likely to rise over the next five years. It is demanding that the Department of Health "takes more leadership on this issue".

About 400 TB patients die each year in the UK, mainly due to late diagnosis or complications of other illnesses. It usually affects the lungs, but sometimes other parts of the body, and can be spread when somebody with the infection coughs or sneezes. It cannot be caught by sharing items such as towels and cups or through someone spitting, and it cannot be passed on genetically. Symptoms include fever and night sweats, a persistent cough, losing weight and coughing or spitting blood. Just over 10% of people exposed for long enough to an infectious person will go on to develop the disease."

You can strengthen your immunity to infectious disease by cutting down on your salt intake. This improves your health in many other ways too.

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
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