That Old TB

At 5 p.m. today it was still twilight. I noticed that because I arrived home from an errand around then, and in noticing that I realized that the days are indeed getting longer. Not that that means the ground is any less buried in snow, the earliest layers of which go back to the last week of 2009.

Last Friday morning, Yuriko and I made our way to a small public health clinic in the northern suburbs, a little far from our part of metro Chicago, but the closest place to receive the swine flu vaccination for no extra charge. "Free," you might call it, but I do support the Cook County public health system through various tax payments. In any case, no out-of-pocket expenses.

Maybe the term "public health clinic" evokes drab waiting rooms, dingy corridors, surly employees and flocks of poor people waiting around for hours: the DMV of medicine. This particular public health clinic fit none of those stereotypes, though it was plain in the way that public buildings often are, say schools designed from the 1950s to the '70s.

A pleasant woman behind the main desk checked us in, we did a little paperwork, and then we waited for about five minutes -- not long enough, since I wasn't able to finish a magazine article that I started -- in a small waiting area with about ten other people. Once we went in, we were shown to a small doctor's office, and minutes later had H1N1 deposited up our noses. And that was that.

"What other kinds of services does this clinic offer?" I asked the desk woman on the way out.

"This is a TB clinic," she answered.

Swine flu, then, is just a temporary sideline. With any luck, I won't need the main services of the clinic, though in our time we can't quite be sure that a disease beaten back by dint of prosperity and antibiotics and public health initiatives will stay beaten back. Still, North America seems like a reasonably good place to stay TB-free.