Saturday, April 26, 2008

TB - still taboo?

Met up with some old friends yesterday who had heard on the grapevine that I was involved in “some medical project” to do with Wales.
I wondered why they kept talking about psychiatric hospitals and conditions in Scottish hospital until it dawned on me that they thought Craig-y-nos had been a psychiatric hospital.

“No, TB”.
Their faces froze. There was an embarrassed silence, just a few seconds. And the subject got changed.

I wonder if other people have had similar reactions?
Is it because there is still some collective memory that TB is still taboo ?

Or is it because it is now OK to talk about mental health problems but not a disease that was close to leprosy and the plague in the public mind.

(Well, it confirmed my initial intuition all those years ago that I was right when I left Wales to keep this dark secret of Craig-y-nos safely under wraps).

No comments: