Adventures of a Disease Detective

By Mark White and Zoe Z White

Mark White was the bubonic plague epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when his wife left him and took the kids to the East Coast. He moved to New York City to be near them and got a job as the hospital epidemiologist at Booth Memorial Medical Center (now the New York-Presbyterian Queens Hospital).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cone Shell Press
• Release date: Mar 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798987807606

Mark White

Dr. Mark White left his job as the bubonic plague epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to start a new life in a large New York City Hospital. He fell in love with a vivacious Filipino nurse named Budsy Mendoza. They married in 1986, the year the People Power revolution overthrew the Marcos dictatorship. They moved to Manila and got jobs helping set up a CDC in the Department of Health. The couple stopped epidemics of cholera, typhoid, measles, malaria, hepatitis, and other tropical diseases. The political situation was stormy, and we lived through six military coup attempts. During the last, we investigated an Ebola virus epidemic.There were frequent natural disasters, including earthquakes, typhoons, and floods. The most memorable was the massive 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo. It spewed so much ash into the atmosphere that the global temperature dropped by two degrees C for two years. Mark and Budsy were charged with ensuring the health of 140,000 evacuees and were gratified when there was only one small outbreak among them. Later, after Idi Amin was overthrown in Uganda, the Rockefeller Foundation hired Mark and Budsy to help the government of Uganda develop an epidemiology training program. The revolution was still going on, so they had a tough assignment. One morning Budsy they found two men shot dead on our street. Then their maid discovered a murder plot against them.The Centers for Disease Control hired Mark to head the Division of International Health in 1997. A week before we left, I was electrocuted by a short circuit in a lamp and had to have a metal prosthesis put in to replace his broken humerus. They moved to Atlanta, where they helped create CDC-style training programs in health ministries in 12 countries and regions, including China, India, Brazil, Japan, Central Asia, and Central America.

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CHAPTER 1

FLUSHING NEW YORK IS A GOOD IDEA

Chapter 1: Flushing New York is a Good Idea

In 1987, I was the bubonic plague specialist for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) when my first wife, tired of my traveling, left me. She took the kids and moved to Boston, where she became an eminent neuropsychologist. To be closer to them, I found a job as a hospital epidemiologist at Booth Memorial Medical Center in Queens, New York.

I moved in with my best friend, Tom Dale Keever, a Shakespearean actor, who lived in a tiny efficiency apartment in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, at Forty-Fifth Street and Tenth Avenue, in a four-story walk-up above a salsa record studio. It was incredibly close to the big theaters, which was great for him but of limited utility for me.

When you walked out the door of his building, you could look down the street and see the hulking World War II aircraft carrier, the Intrepid, which is now a museum. Tom called it my neighborhood aircraft carrier.

Keever was a bit eccentric. He mostly ate tuna, and his mantle sported a giant pyramid of empty tuna cans. The crowning glory of the apartment was the bathtub, which stood in the middle of the room, topped with a door. This served as the table. A tiny kitchen and bathroom completed the amenities.

Tom once played Macbeth in an off-off-Broadway production. "The New York Times reviewed the show, he told me. They said it sucked, and it was all my fault. Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke."

Words to live by.

Back in those days, New York was tough. One day I walked into the lobby of Tom’s building and found two junkies shooting up. I fled up the stairs and got Tom. When we looked down the stairs, the junkies hid their works under the linoleum.

Tom said, We better call the police. Once, I heard a rape going on behind the building. Four police cars were here in five minutes. The station is just up the road.

Nobody came.

Indignant, we decided to confront the police. When we reached the foot of the stairs, I found the junkies’ works and snatched them up. Evidence.

The junkies were dozing on the sidewalk as we walked out the door. Now we were committed to involving the cops.

We headed down to the station and explained our problem. Here’s proof, I said and smacked the works on the sergeant’s desk.

He stared. Finally, he said, I can’t decide whether I should book you for possession of narcotics or put this in the lost and found.

Tom said, What?

Suddenly, a lieutenant appeared behind us and led us to an interrogation room. He was a trim fellow with a little mustache. Here’s the deal. If I arrest these guys, they’ll be out of jail the same day. Think of the junkies as an infestation of vermin. There’s only one way to get them out of the building. If you swear you saw them buying and selling dope, we can put them out of circulation for a couple of years.

Tom and I said, We didn’t see them sell drugs.

The lieutenant said, I can’t hear you. What’s that again? He seemed disappointed. Let me know if you see a sale. Then he released us.

Back at the apartment building, the junkies were gone. We were afraid they’d be back with knives, but we never saw them again.

Another tale from the naked city.

Tom introduced me to a sweet and lovely Columbia graduate student named Jessica. She had luxuriant, wavy brown hair and soulful brown eyes. I soon moved in with her on 113th Street. When you walked out the front door and turned left, you faced the mighty facade of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. Manhattan is amazing.

Jessica and I lived the high life in the city, as opposed to the bridge and tunnel peasants who dwelled in the darkness of the outer boroughs. Of course, Queens was, and is, one of these boroughs. My hospital was in Flushing, Queens. You have no idea how many people sent Christmas cards saying, Flushing New York is a good idea.

Driving to Booth was easy because I was going against the traffic. I sometimes had to rush to the hospital in the middle of the night to handle emergencies. The most direct route was to go up to 125th Street, then head to the Triborough Bridge.

Once, I had to drive to Queens for an emergency at 2:00 a.m. I had an almost-new Ford Escort with front-wheel drive. I sailed through green lights crossing Harlem until Second Avenue when a guy in a big car ran the red light and smashed into my side. He backed up, untangled his vehicle from mine with a sickening screeching of metal, then disappeared uptown.

I climbed out and walked shakily to a gas station to call AAA. Life was more complicated before we all got cell phones.

We don’t make pickups there at night, a nasal, nasty voice informed me.

Do you make pickups in the day? I tried to sound sarcastic to cover the fear shooting up into my chest.

Sometimes, he said, then hung up.

I couldn’t get a taxi either.

I needed to think. I inspected the car to see whether I could bend something to get it rolling again. No luck.

Voices came from close behind me. Hey, man, did you see the license plate on the car that hit you?

I spun. No.

Well, we did.

Thanks. Tell me, and I’ll memorize it.

It don’t work that way. You pay us, and we tell you.

There were at least six of them, young kids wearing black leather jackets. They nudged closer, and I backed up. Somehow they got me into a dark place behind a dumpster. At least the sanitation people would find my body.

You got fifty dollars? Show us your wallet.

A tiny ray of hope. They wanted to negotiate. Look, guys, the number won’t be any good. It’s probably a stolen car.

Yeah, lots of those ’round here, ’specially at night. So what will you pay us?

How about a dollar.

Man, man. You’re not respect’n us, the leader whined. They began pushing me back against the dumpster.

I looked in my wallet. How about five?

Deal.

After the kids left, I moved to the center of 125th Street. I felt safer there. Nobody came. Then a tall black guy walked out of the gas station holding two cups of coffee.

Have a cup. Looks like you had an accident.

Yes, I replied. I can’t get the car towed, and no taxi will pick me up.

That sucks. Look, my uncle has a garage right around the corner. I’ll help you push it there, and then you can pick it up tomorrow.

Wow. Thanks.

We managed to push it a couple of hundred feet to a closed garage door. My new friend knocked on the door and said something. It opened. Inside were blazing lights, a vision of hell. People were cutting up cars with welding torches, taking off license plates, stacking doors against walls, and yanking out engines.

Holy shit!

Yeah, it’s a chop shop.

How do I know your uncle’s not going to chop mine up?

My family decides what to chop, and with all due respect, there’s not much market for Ford Escorts.

I hadn’t thought of that.

Come on. I’ll borrow a car and drive you home.

When we arrived, he leaned across the seat. This is gonna cost you a hundred bucks, buddy.

I don’t have that much.

Look. When I go to court, I have to pay hundreds of dollars to lawyers. They know the rules, got the contacts, know what I mean?

Yes.

Think of me as a lawyer of the streets. I’ll extend you credit till I pick you up in the morning.

How can you be sure I’ll pay?

I know where you live, man. Besides, I can sell the battery and tires of the Escort for more than that. I’m doing you a favor.

Yes, you are, I replied.

I walked into our apartment, called the doctors at Booth who needed help, and talked them through their problems. Then I fell into the blackness of the sort of deep sleep soldiers fall into after being scared out of their wits in battle. In the morning, my lawyer picked me up and took me to the chop shop. My car was parked neatly out front.

The mechanics tried to fix it for you, but we don’t do transaxles. Here’s a phone number to call a tow truck. Help me push it out into the street.

I paid him the hundred bucks plus a ten-dollar tip and took a taxi to work.

CHAPTER 2

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY

On my first day at Booth Memorial Medical Center, I pushed through the big glass front doors and came face-to-face with a tallish woman, black hair flowing down the back of her long white coat. She wore a crimson sweater. Hi, I’m Barbara Russo, the Hospital Nurse Epidemiologist. Welcome. We have an emergency.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Barbara said, This is Peggy, my assistant. Barbara smiled at a willowy strawberry blonde with a healthy pink complexion and pale blue eyes. She slipped around behind me and helped my arms into the sleeves of a white coat. The medical department secretary estimated your size.

They led me double-time to the central elevator banks. It’s in the Respiratory Intensive Care Unit on the eighth floor, Barbara said through tight lips.

What’s the matter?

It’s too horrible. I can’t bring myself to tell you in a public place.

I can’t face a horror without a cup of coffee.

Barbara and Peggy shared a glance and led me into the coffee shop. Barbara told the cashier, He’s in a hurry. Get him a coffee with milk.

I said, Make the coffee black and add a bagel with cream cheese. Ms. Russo, I’m feeling hypoglycemic."

Peggy led me to a table. Barbara said, No need to sit down. I’ll get the coffee to go.

And the bagel. That, too.

Barbara shook her head, paid, looked thoughtful, and said, Toast the bagel.

A flush of gratefulness swept through me. Barbara carried the coffee over and handed it to me. They’ll send the bagel up when it’s done. I could feel Peggy’s breath on my head as she stood behind me.

Ms. Russo…

Call me Barbara.

Barbara, the bagel will take about three minutes, and one’s already passed.

Barbara sat down and leaned close to my face. It’s the head nurse in the Respiratory ICU. It’s terrible what she’s done.

Clearly, she would say no more. We sat silently until the cashier said, One toasted bagel up.

I hurried up and took a bite on the way back to our table.

Peggy snatched the bagel, rewrapped it, and shoved it into my coat pocket.

Five minutes later, they marched me into the humming, beeping sunlight of the Respiratory ICU. There are always big glass windows in these places. Most patients are in comas with their eyes taped shut to keep them from drying out. I’m sure the nurses like the windows. It softens the pain of spending days among sick and dying people as they treat and nurture them.

The unit was one huge room. Beds stood against the walls, and a nursing station was directly across from the doors. Doctors and nurses made rounds in little groups, murmuring to each other.

As I took this all in, a small woman in a cute frilly nurse’s cap and a white minidress charged at us like a heat-seeking missile. She was maybe four feet ten in black heels. She pinned me with flashing dark eyes. Her little dress set off her smooth, brown skin.

She’d been expecting us.

I’m Miss Mendoza, the head nurse.

Barbara extended her arm and pointed like an ancient prophet at an old lady sitting in a chair in a corner. A respirator tube extended from her mouth. Air hissed into the machine, then blew it back out a few seconds later. She wore a colorful handkerchief on her head like an old gypsy. She moved her hands as if sewing invisible cloth.

Miss Mendoza led us to her. Meet Mrs. Feinstein. The old lady’s head popped up, looking at us happily. Her family put her in one of our fine local nursing homes, where she got pneumonia. They transferred her to us. We stabilized her on the ventilator when I noticed a spot on her nurse’s white sweater. When I saw it move, I knew it was a bug, a head louse. I saw lots of them in the Philippines.

So she was from the Philippines. That explained her brown complexion and trim, strong legs. Barbara later told me the nursing department had ordered her to wear longer dresses. She ignored them, proof of Miss Mendoza’s lawless character.

I see, I said. I looked at Barbara. Is this the emergency? Peggy looked out the window. I couldn’t tell whether she was concealing a smile.

Miss Mendoza looked me directly in the eyes as she recited, Today is the first of July, and I noticed the lice at about 3:00 a.m. I notified the resident on call, but it was his first day, and he didn’t know what to do. He said to call you in the morning, so I told my nurse to take off her sweater, comb out her hair and go home. None of my other nurses wanted to care for Mrs. Feinstein for fear of infecting their families. I’ve been up more than twenty-four hours, and I need to rest. I had to do something.

She peered at me like an angry tropical bird. I couldn’t tolerate head lice in my unit, so I did what we did in the Philippines—I had the hospital barber shave her head.

This is a highly effective remedy. Head lice can’t stick to bare skin because they have only two pinchers that look like lobster claws. They cling to individual hair shafts and swing from hair to hair the way Tarzan swings through the forest.

No hair, no lice. That should do the trick, I said. So what’s the problem?

My staff won’t come near her, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to staff the night shift. They all have kids.

We can be sure to kill all lice by washing her hair with Kwell shampoo. It’s highly effective against head lice. You don’t even need a prescription. You can get it at any pharmacy.

Miss Mendoza cleared her throat. I called the pharmacy to ask if they had anything for head lice. They told me about Kwell, but they don’t stock it. They said a family member could pick it up from any drugstore nearby.

A trim professional-looking woman in a long white coat strode into the unit. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun, and her high heels clicked on the linoleum. I’m Mrs. Pappas. I’m the hospital barber.

Peggy said, I paged her to tell her side of the story.

Mrs. Pappas glared. In my twenty-five years of service here, nobody has ever taken a patient’s clippings without their consent.

Miss Mendoza smiled. Did you ask her?

Of course not; she’s not of sound mind. The hair belongs to her family. After I shaved the old lady, you snatched up the bag of hair and destroyed her private property. She cast her eyes around our little group. Miss Mendoza threw the hair into the incinerator. Of course, I reported her to the administration. She violated the rules.

As you can see, the problem, Barbara said icily, is that Miss Mendoza threw away hair that didn’t belong to her. Now the hospital is liable if there’s a lawsuit.

Who’d want a bag full of head lice? I asked.

Peggy was staring out the window again.

Mrs. Feinstein looked up at us, happily stitching her imaginary cloth. She was alone in the world, cared for by strangers, facing life by herself for her last years through her dementia. All in all, she did a good job.

Still, the situation was funny. I suppressed a smile. I think we’ve got it under control for now. I’ll write a note in the chart.

Barbara smiled with thin lips. Saying what?

If the nursing staff had kept the bag of head lice in the unit, it would be an infectious hazard to the staff and visitors. I’ll be happy to talk to the administrators.

Barbara’s eyes widened with shock. What about Miss Mendoza’s behavior toward the barber? Barbers are professionals like us—and she was right about the regulations.

It sounds like Miss Mendoza needs to go home and rest, I said.

The barber turned and marched away, followed by the nurse epidemiologists. Mrs. Feinstein and I watched Miss Mendoza walk briskly away. Her little white minidress glowed in the golden morning sun. I noticed a plaque on the wall behind the desk that said, IN EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS. A little bottle of Lourdes Water and a wooden hammer were glued next to it.

Miss Mendoza turned to face me. Call me Budsy, she said.

CHAPTER 3

CAUGHT BETWEEN TWO WOLVES

Those first days in Booth were often sad and painful. Once, Joe invited Alice Trillin to give Grand Rounds on an essay she’d written in the New England Journal of Medicine about her soon-to-be fatal lung cancer. She was Calvin Trillin’s wife and an author in her own right.

Fear and grief swept over me when she stepped up to the microphone. She looked so much like Bobbie. Ms. Trillin stood a few feet away from me as I listened to her mourning her lost life and love.

About halfway through her talk, I lurched to my feet and charged across the hall into Barbara Russo’s office. She grabbed me into a tight hug, and I flooded her sweater with tears. We never talked about it later.

Tides of immigrants came to Queens. Flushing adsorbed them in waves, starting with the Dutch, English, then Irish, Greeks, and Italians, then Asians. Barbara was Italian, of course, and her sidekick, the Irish Peggy, was married to a Czech. Budsy was part of a vast influx of Asians that followed. They were not the huddled masses types but ambitious middle-class strivers. Years later, my next-door neighbor sold his house to a Hong Kong Chinese woman.

He said, I was going to ask for more, but then she opened a little suitcase full of hundred-dollar bills.

A couple of years later, I met Mrs. Chen, a Chinese lady from Hong Kong. She’d developed the terrible immune disease systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Your immune system is designed to destroy invading threats by dissolving invaders with acid and harsh enzymes. If your white cells mistake your own tissues for enemies, they tear into every organ in your body and dissolve them. That’s what happened to Mrs. Chen. You can die quickly. In English, Systemic Lupus Erythematosus means the red wolf.

Her doctor put her on high-dose steroids to block the immune system. It seemed to work at first, but then she developed wracking fevers and seizures, and he called me.

When I entered her room, Mrs. Chen lay in her bed, thin and wan, covered with rashes. She was pushing a man away with a skinny arm.

I’m her husband, he said. I’m very worried about her.

She was shivering, a sign her temperature was going up. I said, She is very sick. Please let me examine her.

He bowed like a waiter inviting you to sit down at a white-clothed table.

I think it will be better if I examine her alone.

He left. Mrs. Chen looked up from her bed, eyes dull. Her skin was dry and slack, her muscles lax and rubbery. She smelled like skin lotion, rubbing alcohol, and unbrushed teeth. My neck’s stiff, she said.

I tried to bend her neck. It was so stiff I picked her up like a wooden plank. This is a sign of meningitis, inflammation around the brain.

She gasped.

I’m sorry, I said.

Through gritted teeth, she said, Please warn me if you do this again.

I will. Sorry, Mrs. Chen.

She tensed and looked up at me, and took a deep breath.

Had her doctor known a little epidemiology, he’d have realized Asians had high rates of tuberculosis. TB is an unusual disease. Your body fights germs by attacking them with antibodies. Your white cells eat the bacteria and dissolve them. TB germs protect themselves by secreting a waxy cover that keeps antibodies and white blood cells from sticking to them. Plan B for the immune system is to wall them off with calcium and scar tissue to trap the bacteria. These lumps are called tubercles. They can get large and are distinctive on chest X-Rays. I have a few on my lungs, left over from exposure during my internship.

Unfortunately, the germs survive inside the tubercles. They can happily live inside for the rest of your life, waiting to break out if your immune system weakens. Eventually, everybody’s immune system weakens from another disease or old age. The bacteria pour out into the bloodstream and attack every part of your body. The high doses of steroids her doctor put her on profoundly suppressed her immune system. She was a set up to die from TB.

Before I saw her X-rays, I knew that she almost certainly had miliary TB. A dreadful disease, it used to be called galloping consumption.

In the 1800s, pathologists did autopsies and found little hard abscesses all through the bodies, reminding them of tiny millet seeds. That’s why it’s called miliary. Imagine how dedicated and curious these men were. They knew they took the risk of getting what they called ‘corpse fever.’ Dissection was against the law, so these heroes often had to work in secret, frequently on smelly old corpses dug up from cemeteries.

In the nineteenth century, TB was called the white plague. In the Middle Ages, TB frequently affected the skin, causing lupus vulgaris, the common wolf. Don’t let anyone tell you it was great to live back when knighthood was in flower. TB was flowering, too.

Poor Mrs. Chen was being torn apart by the two wolves. She lay listlessly, looking up at me, too tired to talk. I started her on high-dose anti-TB drugs and admitted her to the intensive care unit. It was touch and go. The steroids were helping the TB spread, but cutting them would allow her lupus erythematosus back.

To justify cutting back on the steroids and treating her TB, I needed to see it on a biopsy. Taking a piece of her lung might kill her, but she had a swollen liver, and we could biopsy that. It was midnight, but I called my favorite surgeon, Jim Turner. He was the last of the heroic surgeons who stayed up all night, holding people’s arteries together as they sprayed showers of blood. I always thought of him as the last survivor of the age of Iron Men and Wooden Heads. As an internist, I always put an article on the charts so residents could learn about the disease. Jim was the only surgeon who put journal articles under my door. I was vexed because it was my job to put articles under his door. That meant I had to look up two more articles.

I called him, and he came in at three a.m. and did the biopsy. At four, he called and woke me up. She did well in surgery, sick as she was.

No need to wake me up.

Fuck you, he laughed.

I could hardly complain.

That morning the biopsy came back positive for TB. I could cut the steroids way back and start treating her for TB.

Eventually, she made it through and