Best selling author, John Green, is famous, in part, for his young adult novels, like "The Fault is in Our Stars," a tear-jerker about two teenage cancer patients. And now his brand new book, "Everything is Tuberculosis," is out.
In it he's asking us to care about tuberculosis. Why should we care? Few of us folks in first world countries get TB these days, and even if we do, it's now curable.
So, again, why should I care?
I've shared my TB story a couple of times in this blog. My mother and her two brothers all had TB. She was diagnosed when I was a pre-schooler and my brother, Paul, was a toddler. She was shipped of to a sanitarium where she existed for seven or so years, until she finally drowned as her lungs filled with her own blood. By the way, my brother, Paul, was named after his Uncle Paul, who too, died with TB.
Years ago we, as a society, had a strange fascination with TB. Many of our most creative people had it, like all the Bronte' family, D H Lawrence, Thoreau and Doc Holliday. But, back then, we called it "consumption" and romanticized it.
But that was then and this is now. So why should I care about this disease that still kills over a million people a year, more than any other infectious disease?
How can we help others when we're having the bejeebers scared out of us every single day by just watching the news?
I think, in part, Green is using tuberculosis as a metaphor. And it's timely. We're in the season of Lent, a time of deep introspection for many of us.
Some folks I don't know, and some I love more than life itself, are suffering Not from TB, but from other cruelties. It's an honor to suffer with them. I will stand with them as long as I'm here.
For me, today, Everything IS Tuberculosis.
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