Traveling tuberculosis patient hits back at critics
By, Denise Grady, International Herald Tribune, June 10, 2007
"TB SPREADS THROUGH THE AIR, BUT ONLY A SMALL PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE WHO ARE EXPOSED TO THE BACTERIA ACTUALLY GET SICK. XDR-TB IS NOT MORE VIRULENT OR MORE CONTAGIOUS THAN OTHER TYPES, BUT IT IS OF GREAT CONCERN BECAUSE IT IS SO DIFFICULT TO TREAT"
"WHEN I'M DONE WITH ALL THIS, AM I GOING TO HAVE A PRACTICE [LAW] TO GET BACK TO, WITH THE IMPRESSION OUT THERE NOW THAT I'M THIS SELFISH, SELF-ABSORBED PERSON?"
By the time Andrew Speaker and his wife returned to the United States from Europe late last month, government officials and news reports had already branded him as a runaway tuberculosis patient who had deliberately evaded health officials and knowingly put other people at risk by traveling on crowded airplanes.
"This is what we're hearing on the news when we land," Speaker said Thursday from his hospital room in Denver. He called The New York Times in response to repeated requests for an interview. "My wife and I look at each other, and I said, 'They're going for our throats here.' "
Speaker and his family have been fighting back ever since, disputing the accounts of government health officials who contended he had been warned not to fly because he posed an infection risk to others.
"I think when they started all this, they forgot that I spend my whole life defending people who are seriously hurt and need help," said Speaker, 31, a personal injury lawyer. "I don't think they took that into account when they started coming after me and my family. We're not the kind of people who back down."
Speaker's father, Theodore, also a lawyer, went so far as to record conversations with health officials, and to release selected excerpts from the recordings in which a doctor from the Fulton County Health Department in Georgia can be clearly heard saying, "You're not contagious" and, "As far as we can tell you, you're not a threat to anybody else right now."
Speaker declined to release the complete recordings, saying they included personal medical details that were "none of anybody's darn business."
During the interview, Speaker spoke at length, expressing anger, frustration and worry about his reputation and career. He accused health officials of trying to destroy his credibility to cover their own mistakes in handling his case. They themselves never wore masks around him, he said, and never told him that he posed any risk to his family.
"If I'm a danger to people in close contact, shouldn't they have told me I was a threat to my wife, sleeping together?" he asked.
The convoluted tale began in January, when an X-ray taken for an injury to the left side of his rib cage picked up a shadow in his right lung.
TB was immediately suspected, and eventually diagnosed. How he contracted the disease is not known, but a trip to Vietnam is a suspected source.
It was not until May 10 that doctors realized that Speaker's TB was resistant to several widely used drugs. They asked him not to travel, but did not discourage him from going to work or tell him to wear a mask and so he saw no reason not to stick with plans to get married in Greece.
Not until May 22 did health officials know that the resistance was even worse than they had thought. The bacteria were extensively drug resistant, or XDR, meaning that nearly all the usual TB drugs were useless. By that time, Speaker was already in Europe.
TB spreads through the air, but only a small percentage of people who are exposed to the bacteria actually get sick. XDR tuberculosis is not more virulent or more contagious than other types, but it is of great concern because it is so difficult to treat.
In Rome, Speaker was notified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that he had XDR TB and should not fly. At first, he said, an official told him that the CDC would help him with travel plans. But a day later, he said, he was told that he would have to pay for a special medical evaluation that would probably cost $140,000 and that his name would be on a no-fly list. The official urged him to turn himself in to the Italian health authorities.
But Speaker said he believed that his best and perhaps only hope for a cure was to get to the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, which has expertise treating this kind of TB.
Fearing that he might be quarantined indefinitely in Italy, he and his wife, Sarah, avoided the no-fly list by booking a flight to Canada and then driving into the United States, where a border guard ignored an alert triggered by his passport. He said that he wanted to dispel the news media portrayal of him and his wife as "the super-rich, globe-trotting couple" who could easily have afforded to pay $140,000 to fly home in a private plane.
He said their wedding in Greece cost less than $2,000 and they had planned to travel around Europe afterward, staying in inexpensive hotels. He recently left his father's law firm to start one of his own and had sold his house and many of his belongings to finance it.
"The long and short of it is, we don't have $140,000" he said.
Beyond getting well, he said, his main concern is his law career and that is why he was speaking out. "When I'm done with all this, am I going to have a practice to get back to, with the impression out there now that I'm this selfish, self-absorbed person? It's not how I've lived my life. When I'm done with all this, I want to make sure I still have my life to get back to."
Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/10/frontpage/health.php
"TB SPREADS THROUGH THE AIR, BUT ONLY A SMALL PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE WHO ARE EXPOSED TO THE BACTERIA ACTUALLY GET SICK. XDR-TB IS NOT MORE VIRULENT OR MORE CONTAGIOUS THAN OTHER TYPES, BUT IT IS OF GREAT CONCERN BECAUSE IT IS SO DIFFICULT TO TREAT"
"WHEN I'M DONE WITH ALL THIS, AM I GOING TO HAVE A PRACTICE [LAW] TO GET BACK TO, WITH THE IMPRESSION OUT THERE NOW THAT I'M THIS SELFISH, SELF-ABSORBED PERSON?"
By the time Andrew Speaker and his wife returned to the United States from Europe late last month, government officials and news reports had already branded him as a runaway tuberculosis patient who had deliberately evaded health officials and knowingly put other people at risk by traveling on crowded airplanes.
"This is what we're hearing on the news when we land," Speaker said Thursday from his hospital room in Denver. He called The New York Times in response to repeated requests for an interview. "My wife and I look at each other, and I said, 'They're going for our throats here.' "
Speaker and his family have been fighting back ever since, disputing the accounts of government health officials who contended he had been warned not to fly because he posed an infection risk to others.
"I think when they started all this, they forgot that I spend my whole life defending people who are seriously hurt and need help," said Speaker, 31, a personal injury lawyer. "I don't think they took that into account when they started coming after me and my family. We're not the kind of people who back down."
Speaker's father, Theodore, also a lawyer, went so far as to record conversations with health officials, and to release selected excerpts from the recordings in which a doctor from the Fulton County Health Department in Georgia can be clearly heard saying, "You're not contagious" and, "As far as we can tell you, you're not a threat to anybody else right now."
Speaker declined to release the complete recordings, saying they included personal medical details that were "none of anybody's darn business."
During the interview, Speaker spoke at length, expressing anger, frustration and worry about his reputation and career. He accused health officials of trying to destroy his credibility to cover their own mistakes in handling his case. They themselves never wore masks around him, he said, and never told him that he posed any risk to his family.
"If I'm a danger to people in close contact, shouldn't they have told me I was a threat to my wife, sleeping together?" he asked.
The convoluted tale began in January, when an X-ray taken for an injury to the left side of his rib cage picked up a shadow in his right lung.
TB was immediately suspected, and eventually diagnosed. How he contracted the disease is not known, but a trip to Vietnam is a suspected source.
It was not until May 10 that doctors realized that Speaker's TB was resistant to several widely used drugs. They asked him not to travel, but did not discourage him from going to work or tell him to wear a mask and so he saw no reason not to stick with plans to get married in Greece.
Not until May 22 did health officials know that the resistance was even worse than they had thought. The bacteria were extensively drug resistant, or XDR, meaning that nearly all the usual TB drugs were useless. By that time, Speaker was already in Europe.
TB spreads through the air, but only a small percentage of people who are exposed to the bacteria actually get sick. XDR tuberculosis is not more virulent or more contagious than other types, but it is of great concern because it is so difficult to treat.
In Rome, Speaker was notified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that he had XDR TB and should not fly. At first, he said, an official told him that the CDC would help him with travel plans. But a day later, he said, he was told that he would have to pay for a special medical evaluation that would probably cost $140,000 and that his name would be on a no-fly list. The official urged him to turn himself in to the Italian health authorities.
But Speaker said he believed that his best and perhaps only hope for a cure was to get to the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, which has expertise treating this kind of TB.
Fearing that he might be quarantined indefinitely in Italy, he and his wife, Sarah, avoided the no-fly list by booking a flight to Canada and then driving into the United States, where a border guard ignored an alert triggered by his passport. He said that he wanted to dispel the news media portrayal of him and his wife as "the super-rich, globe-trotting couple" who could easily have afforded to pay $140,000 to fly home in a private plane.
He said their wedding in Greece cost less than $2,000 and they had planned to travel around Europe afterward, staying in inexpensive hotels. He recently left his father's law firm to start one of his own and had sold his house and many of his belongings to finance it.
"The long and short of it is, we don't have $140,000" he said.
Beyond getting well, he said, his main concern is his law career and that is why he was speaking out. "When I'm done with all this, am I going to have a practice to get back to, with the impression out there now that I'm this selfish, self-absorbed person? It's not how I've lived my life. When I'm done with all this, I want to make sure I still have my life to get back to."
Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/10/frontpage/health.php
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