Men only: Men ought to chest thump ‘bila fear’

It was almost exactly six years ago and I was in the pretty little town of Italia called Venezia. A very close relative of mine called me from Kenya to ask me how I was liking the city on water, with its multiple canals and pretty little bridges. Just before I could tell him I would send him a postcard, he began coughing so hard on the phone, it was like his chest was about to burst.

A terrible fright took hold of me as I listened to that hacking cough. Like a little man with a malfunctioning hacksaw was inside his chest, burring through his lungs and ribs to produce that horrible ripping sound that was coming through his lips.

After what seemed an eternity, my relative stopped coughing and took a big sip of water. ‘I am going to be okay,’ he said – but the chill had already touched my heart. Nobody coughs like that, and is simply going to be okay – and five months later, he was gone. Dead from pulmonary tuberculosis that had literally eaten his lungs away, when we looked at the X-Rays near the end of his life.

Sunday was World Tuberculosis Day. And although I have since found closure from the sadness and horror of my relative’s passing, World TB day is a good chance to pass on the message about this global and oft chronic disease, as an issue of Men (and women’s) health.

I spoke to one Dr Fidel Assesor of Medicross Clinics in Kitui, and he said that TB, terrible as it is, is a completely treatable disease that can be managed by medication; and with all the research and awareness programmes around it, TB rates are falling, though it still is a dangerous disease.

The first thing all women should know, when it comes to TB, is that the BCG vaccination for children is very important, says the Medicross medical man.

Dr Fidel further says that it is important to be have fidelity towards the medical regimen. Otherwise, the tuberculosis may become drug resistant and lead to harsher measures such as quarantine for patients as a public health issue. This doesn’t mean we men, and women, should panic every time someone coughs in a PSV or a crowded room, and dash out of doors, or break the windows open to get some fresh air.

‘If the TB infected person is getting treatment,’ says Dr Assesor, ‘then you can be sure the risk of infection is minimal.’ In prison, more than the overcrowded conditions, the mycobacterium (its scientific first name) spreads and rests in the human bodies packed therein – because many of them are HIV positive.

‘A lowered immunity system simply means when the TB germs get into the body, there are less cells to fight them,’ says Dr Fidel. ‘Then they can really take a hold of the person, and cause havoc.’ Dr Assesor’s assessment that if one gets a persistent cough, best to get it tested at once for TB – whether at a private clinic like Medicross (at a small cost) or for free in a public hospital – than to regret later after one has come down with the disease. I still have the poem I wrote on the spot – right after that beloved relative had hung up – that is more premonition than poem.

‘Standing at the Negretti Museum, in this strange midday silence that echoes your phone call, I muse at how I thought we’d always have time, those long Ngong nights when we listened to Billie Myers on drizzly nights, and drank porridge (or brandy dredges) by chilly morning light.

Later in the twilight of oh seven, you seemed to be better, putting your life together, I thanked Heaven, and then Life happened. Vienna, and the violence of violins.

Now here we are, six years lateron a line crackling with static or maybe it is your cough, Racking a young man who sounds like Dying and you whisper:

‘Oh cousin, I have not seen you for so long’ and

‘These days I am always tired, like I feel like I have lived a thousand years.’’

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