The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The junior residents and nurses could not find a vein in his hands to insert an intravenous line, and when I was asked to place a large-bore central IV line in his jugular vein to deliver antibiotics and fluids, it was as if my needle were piercing dried parchment. His skin had a papery, translucent quality that nearly crackled as I touched it. M.K. had been diagnosed with a particular variant of severe combined immunodeficiency (acronymed SCID), in which both B cells (white cells that make antibodies) and T cells (that kill microbially infected cells and help mount an immune response) are dysfunctional. A grotesque English garden of microbes—some common, some exotic—grew out of his blood: Streptococcus, Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, weird fungal varieties, and rare bacterial species whose names I could not even pronounce. It was as if his body had been transformed into a living petri dish for microbes.

Fire 🔥