From the highs of celebrating our first Christmas in Australia, it is amazing how quickly everything can unravel. The day was off to a bad start when I came downstairs to find Coppertail had passed in the night. It seems the shock of moving home was too much for him after all. Barnadi then burried him with his brother Bronzefin under the lemon tree.
The second piece of bad news came at work when I was phoned by the Staff Clinic with a piece of very unexpected news. It seems at some point in the last year I have become exposed to someone with TB and I am now infected with Latent TB. In a way I should look at this as good news, as if I hadn't started work at the Alfred, I would never have had the blood test and I may have lived with this hidden disease for years without even knowing about it.
To put everyones mind at rest, latent TB is not contagious and I am in no ways unwell at present, but between 5-10% of people with latent TB will go on to develop the full infection if left untreated. The gold standard of treatment is 9 months of isoniazid which has a 92% chance of success, but it is 9 months of treatment, and due to the risk of liver toxicity also means 9 months of abstinence from alcohol. Other treatments do exist but efficacy is not so good. I do not have to make the decision just yet as I wont see the doctor until next week. It just goes to show the BCG vaccine was a waste of time, a scar and an unusual patch of arm hair and I still got TB.
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