Some diseases I'm not overly worried about getting

[xiphias]

Night blindness
Beriberi
Scurvy
Rickets

Dysentery (it's possible I'd get it, but unlikely I'd die from it)
Cholera
Tuberculosis

Bubonic plague
Malaria

Smallpox
Measles
Mumps
Rubella
Polio

Yes, a lot of these diseases still exist around the world, and are killing people in epidemic numbers. But I, personally, as a middle-class first-word resident with health care, am not at significant risk for any of them.

And I've listed pretty much all of the most feared diseases in history. I am personally protected against almost all of the worst diseases there are. Their causes are well-documented and well understood, their cures or preventions or palliative treatments are known and effective.

That's a rather reassuring thought.

Comments

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

Night blindness won't kill you. Also it's a generic term for about 3 different conditions. One is a degenerative retinal condition, most common among the elderly and you could still get that another 30 years down the road. It can also involve loss of peripheral vision. One is a deficiency correctable by increased Vitamin A and Carratine. A Third is a genetic defect, which may or may not worsen over time and is generally not correctable. There is also what they call 'glare sensitivity', which has to do with a reaction to artificial light sources brightness while in a darkened state (which sort of looks like what happens when you use a digital camera and get too much light reflection on a surface).

Tuberculosis, well it depends on what kind. There are some very drug-resistant strains out there and there have been cases of it in placed like NYC, so it's not impossible that you might get it.

The rest you're probably a 100% correct about :-)

Me, I remain paranoid about all diseases. But I am happy to know that I am not subject to the health risks that my grandparents or parents had when they came into the world.

[copperpoint.livejournal.com]

Oy. If you want to really get freaked out about diseases, go read Bitten by Pamela Nagami. *shudders at the memory*

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

There was a recent NPR piece about a charitable effort to treat ordinary ailments like heart disease in Africa. Even as bad as things are there, the majority of people die (and presumably will die) of the same diseases of aging that people in the first world do.

Cheap anti-aging tech wouldn't be a help only for people in well-off countries.

[lazy-boring-man.livejournal.com]

I'm mostly afraid of cancer and STD's, so I'm kinda screwed.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Cancer and heart disease are the most likely things to kill you, and STDs are the serious contagious disease for which you are at the greatest risk.

But that's because you are moderately safe from every disease I listed above. If you were at risk for any of those, you wouldn't be worried about the stuff you are worried about -- because the other stuff would kill you first.

[lazy-boring-man.livejournal.com]

Y'know, that's a great point.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Well this would make a good meme! :-)

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

There's actually currently a mumps epidemic in the Midwest.

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

I've heard about that and been concerned (it's in 8 states) but have heard since that as long as you were innoculated 25 years ago or earlier you should be ok. They changed the vaccination method back then and evidently the new one is weaker and has a 10-20% failure rate (depending on if you got a second shot of it).

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

No, there are a couple cases of mumps. It's not really an epidemic -- largely because the high rate of innoculation acts as a barrier -- and I strongly suspect everyone is going to make a full recovery. The mumps innoculation has something like a 10% failure rate, so if cases break out, you are going to get a couple. But I strongly doubt that it's going to get to epidemic proportions.

And even if it does, I'm personally 90% protected.

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Well, AIDS and cancer are still pretty fearsome these days, though not as bad as a decade or so ago. Which does not negate your point, but makes it, to me at least, a bit less reassuring.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

AIDS takes, what, 20 years to kill you? If not longer with paliative drugs? That's not scary by historical disease standards.

And cancer? Cancer, mostly, is what gets you if nothing else does. (I mean, there are cancers that strike the young, like lukemia, but still. . . ) You're going to die of SOMETHING. Cancer and heart disease are what's left after you cure everything else.

[kyra-ojosverdes.livejournal.com]

My disease fears aren't "how fast will it kill me" but "how will I afford treatment?" From that standpoint, HIV and cancer scare the hell out of me. If I hadn't been on Medicaid when I got my thyroid cancer diagnosis in 2003, I have no idea what I've have done. There's no way I could have afforded treatment.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

You'll move to Massachusetts where hospitals are legally required to spend a certain percentage of their income treating the indigent.

[kyra-ojosverdes.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course! Because moving doesn't cost any money, either! ;-)

[burgundy.livejournal.com]

Uninsured people who get diagnosed with cancer are, for the most part, pretty well fucked. Some people might qualify for Medicaid. Some people may be able to get treatment at a Hill-Burton facility. But most people are up shit creek.

HIV, on the other hand, is easier. I see by your user info that you're in Montana. Montana has a fairly generous AIDS Drug Assistance Program that provides medications for people who are uninsured and make less than 330% of the federal poverty level ($31,581 for a single person). There are also a number of Ryan White-funded clinics in the state, including one in Missoula.

I used to work for a clinic that provided free primary care services to low-income uninsured people with HIV. There were a lot of services, through us and other local agencies. They got free health care, free eye care, free dental care... One guy turned out to be a false positive, he didn't actually have it, and while that was of course a relief, it was also in some ways a disappointment, because it meant that he could no longer get the health services he needed. And how fucked up is that, that someone could, in the short term, be worse off after finding out that they don't have HIV?

[kyra-ojosverdes.livejournal.com]

My workplace is in the same building, one floor up, from the Missoula AIDS Council. It is a very, very good thing that Missoula has such a place.

OTOH, one of my co-workers is HIV+. This co-worker gets pneumonia about once a year, and nearly died (as in parents were there making end of life plans) a couple years ago from it. The assistance programs don't cover all the related expenses, just the retroviral drugs.


"And how fucked up is that, that someone could, in the short term, be worse off after finding out that they don't have HIV?"

No kidding. There are a few situations like that -- raising kids in poverty isn't in any way easy (single mom of three living just above the poverty line here, and it's the first time we've been above it), but having children under the age of 13 in the home generally means you can get food and emergency shelter. My job included taking crisis calls from people in various hardship circumstances, seeing if my workplace has a program to help, and if not helping them find another local resource which can help, if any exist at all. More often than not, for a childless person, it comes down to "Call local churches and hope you can get $20 from every tenth church you ask." I've been asked many times by frustrated female callers "So if I went and got pregnant, I could get help?" And yeah. Short-term, they'd be in a better position if they conceived and bore a child they can't afford to raise. :-\

[burgundy.livejournal.com]

According to this website, Montana does include some antibiotics for OIs in their formulary. This might not have been the case when your co-worker was so sick, or they might have needed a drug that's not in the formulary. But even as it stands, Montana's drug list is way better than Texas's, and the Texas eligibility criteria are stricter. And Texas, in turn, is better than South Dakota, which doesn't even pay for protease inhibitors at all (!!!) and limits benefits to $7k per year.

[kyra-ojosverdes.livejournal.com]

I think the biggest expense my co-worker faced was from being hospitalized for several weeks.

$7k per year? I haven't done the math, but does that even come close to covering the drugs to keep HIV from progressing? (Even without covering protease inhibitors... gah.)

Healthcare. *sigh*

[burgundy.livejournal.com]

In Houston, where I worked, there was a relatively decent county-based hospital system for the uninsured. I don't know what HIV+ people in other cities do when they need to be hospitalized. You're right, the ADAP system doesn't touch that.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

At this point, the approach is to manage AIDS like any other long-term illness. If you can afford the latest and greatest drugs to treat it, you can live a fairly long time and have a fairly good quality of life. They're now starting to run into people who are HIV+ and who are dying of the usual old-age stuff: cancers other than KS, heart disease, stroke, etc., because they've lived that long.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

Sorry... In recent years there's been a resurgence of tuberculosis in this country, most notably, on the West coast. Worse, there's more antibiotic-resistant TB than there used to be.

If you are bitten by or get a puncture wound from the claw of a cat who's had to hunt for a living, you have a fair to middling chance of getting the bacteria which causes bubonic plague. Been there, done that.

Smallpox shouldn't be an issue as long as none of the saved virus gets out of the lab.

Measles, mumps and rubella - could happen. Immunity conferred by the vaccines may not be lifelong. Last I looked, we still didn't know for sure. With these conditions, it's not just being dead that's the problem, it's other long-term issues. Like sterility.

Cholera, dysentery, malaria - depends on if/where you travel. And where those pesky mosquitos decide to go.

Aren't I just the cheeriest thing today? Sorry. Sort of.

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

That's true, the measels, mumps and rubella vaccinations only go back to 1957, so they haven't had the ability to study if it lasts for a lifetime :-)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'm not saying I CAN'T get any of these. I'm just saying that the chances of getting them are not high enough to be worth worrying about.

TB, for instance, mostly strikes inner city and rural populations, neither of which I am. And, given that I get regular checkups, and live three blocks from a hospital, if I DID manage to get it, I'd probably be able to get early intervention care. If I got an antibiotic-resistant strain, I'd STILL most likely survive, because I could get some paliative care, and have a reasonably robust immune system.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

You're also smart enough and diligent enough to remember to take meds, and to take the full course of them. The reservoir of TB is apparently the homeless population, because many of them just take pills until they feel better, which means that the drug-resistant strains of the bacterium survive.

[mswae.livejournal.com]

And the prison populations. Every hospital that handles prisoners has negative pressure TB rooms (also part of our bird flu defense ... we'll be fine as long as we never get more than six cases at once ...). And we're not even serving the huge state prisons, just a regional one.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

It's not just the homeless who do this. They, at least, have a financial excuse. I know too many people who are perfectly well able to buy their meds, but stop taking them when they feel better just because they don't like taking pills. grmfjgh.

[(Anonymous)]

Massachusetts provides free TB medication to anyone, with no eligibility checks required. And it only costs about $6 a month anyway.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

To try to make up for my previously grinch-like response: The really good news is that most of what a person could come down with in most countries with fair to middling health care isn't going to kill you, even if you don't ever find out what it is. It probably won't even have serious long-term consequences. There are, of course, exceptions to this, but I'm working on being cheery, here.