http://pitchfork.com/news/41200-broadcasts-trish-keenan-hospitalized-seriously-ill/

http://pitchfork.com/news/41200-broadcasts-trish-keenan-hospitalized-seriously-ill/

--- Frontwoman Trish Keenan of British electronic experimental pop duo Broadcast is currently hospitalized and coping with a serious illness. Warp Records sent over the following statement: "[Manager] Martin [Pike] says that he can confirm that Trish is in hospital and very ill with pneumonia currently. At this time, please respect the privacy of the band and the family and when there is any more news he will be sure to update fans."

Rumors of Keenan's illness began with a post on Broadcast's Facebook page last night from Crystal Summers, a user claiming to be Keenan's sister. She wrote, "I'm sorry everyone but I have some bad news. Trish Keenan is fighting for her life in hospital. I will keep everyone informed." Summers went on to say that Keenan has been on life support since Christmas, having contracted H1N1 flu after a trip to Australia. She added, "She won't be singing for some time as she has to have a tube that the doctors put in her throat. She will have to have surgery and she won't be able to get any infections in the wound." ---

Deaths of musicians are always somber but often these sorts of annoucements seem even worse. I hope she can pull through.

edit - forget to write a proper title for the topic, my apologies

Ouch.

Yeah, really hope she pulls through, I love the music they make!

holy fuck no, and i've been listening to so much broadcast lately. one of my very favourite bands, i think my third most listened artist on last.fm...

get well soon trish

She couldn't possibly die, its 2011 for fuck sake.

oh shit. i hope she's ok, <3 broadcast.

damn, my dad caught pneumonia last year and was in the hospital for about 3 months. hope she pulls through

I had H1N1, it wasn't that bad.

  On 1/13/2011 at 11:28 PM, xxx said:

The new face of medicine. Young and old struck down with multi-strain viruses, resistant superbugs and the hospital returning to its past of being avoided because that's where one dies. The hospital will ultimately kill her if the pneumonia doesn't do it first. Medicine has lost about a 100 years in the last 20 or so--it's very sad; she can't be over 40. I wish her the best but I am not happy to be in health care right now for this very reason--fuck the money and job security.

if you ever have the time or desire to do so i'd love to read a 3 page XXX style post about what you talk about here, sounds very interesting

:( get better trish, we love you !

  On 1/14/2011 at 1:29 AM, xxx said:

  On 1/14/2011 at 12:28 AM, Awepittance said:

  On 1/13/2011 at 11:28 PM, xxx said:

The new face of medicine. Young and old struck down with multi-strain viruses, resistant superbugs and the hospital returning to its past of being avoided because that's where one dies. The hospital will ultimately kill her if the pneumonia doesn't do it first. Medicine has lost about a 100 years in the last 20 or so--it's very sad; she can't be over 40. I wish her the best but I am not happy to be in health care right now for this very reason--fuck the money and job security.

 

if you ever have the time or desire to do so i'd love to read a 3 page XXX style post about what you talk about here, sounds very interesting

Well, there's not a lot to say and that's why it's scary because there should be lots to say about a devastating thing like antibiotic resistance. All I hear is this bug is not susceptible to agent A...now B...now C...etc. It only leaves certain antibiotics left that have dire side effects like amphotericin and vancomycin. Some of those antibiotics can make you deaf, destroy your sense of smell and kill you quick if not administered in a hospital.

 

I always laugh at those who decry evolution because you can see it happen in a week with bacteria. In genetics, we made E. Coli feed on lactose when it normally can't. Since bacterial DNA is circular, they can trade bits of code called plasmids back and forth through sex pili (snicker). What would take something like a mammal perhaps a million years to do can take bacteria a few days. We introduced something called the "lac operon", the E. coli took it in and boom, eats lactose with no problem.

 

With bacteria's rapid evolutionary capability in mind, the miracle of penicillin was pretty short-lived relatively. Like slow turns of the screw, a few bacteria remained after each penicillin treatment. Given the widespread and abusive application of antibiotics, all of those survivor bugs who became resistant through plasmid modification are coming home to roost--not one by one but as an avalanche. The root is the hospital. Hospitals use antibiotics preemptively and prophylactically every second. Going to have abdominal surgery? Neomycin flush through the intestines to clear out E. coli and Triclosan and Chlorhexidine on the skin to kill S. aureus. Don't know what that spooky disorder is? Broad-spectrum antibiotics until we get the culture and sensitivity (what is the bug and what kills it).

 

The first sign was MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). It is now everywhere and the community-acquired infections--meaning that toilet seat you share in an office--are particularly virulent. Don't worry, you can't do shit about it. The old standby was that, if you were young and not immunocompromised, it didn't matter what bugs colonized you because you'd be strong enough to fight them off. Wrong. Perfectly healthy young adults and I'm sure plenty on WATMM (don't speak up lol) have had an MRSA outbreak as a skin lesion that would not heal. It gets better, it gets worse, it never goes away. You can't use anything penicillin-derived so now the sulfa drugs are the only ones that work. The problem is that sulfas suck, they make you puke, tons of people are already allergic to them, etc.

 

This nightmare scenario is happening everyday now. Your healthy, 55 year old dad goes in for an outpatient surgical procedure--let's say, release of a compressed nerve in the lower back. Piece-of-piss, no general anaesthetic needed, all said and done it's about 4 hours out of his day. Goes home, doesn't feel well, gets worse really fast, back in the hospital. Vancomycin-resistant enterococcus, which literally infested the privacy curtain, the bedside table, the nurse's hands, etc., has caused pneumonia. The battle becomes a protracted one with a stay of 2 or 3 months instead of 2 or 3 weeks just a couple of decades ago because one by one, antibiotics fail to control it. Hell, they pick up more resistant bugs just by having invasive things like an IV or central line that can't help but be contaminated.

 

The capacity of influenza to kill is nothing new and it was just 80 years ago that a pandemic that, if it struck today, might completely wipe out everyone related to WATMM because it struck the young. We are now on the precipice of another one thanks to the chimera-like ability of influenza to incorporate multiple strains into a single buttfuck like H1N1. Fortunately, we've kept up with it by modifying vaccines and while people can get really sick, they tend to get better but only with sophisticated health care. That ginger from Harry Potter got it and he beat it but I would not rule out his ability to plunk down millions for the best care. Did Trish Keenan have the same resources? Did she realize the gravity in time? I don't know but the fact that she's in the hospital on a respirator does not bode well simply because a superbug's favorite home is the hospital and on the hands of those who provide care. They can't help it--doctors and nurses scrub their hands raw and rooms are fastidiously cleaned but it only takes a couple of unsees foes to take root and multiply. There is no such thing as true sterility unless it's an inanimate surface. So it's a race against time for people like that and they are losing in higher numbers than ever.

 

I'm not a complete doomsday kind of guy. Scientists in every field--physics, chemistry, computers, biology, etc.--are fucking smarter than ever and I believe we will stave off a total catastrophe but not before a large number of people stuck in the gap of "penicillin--->revolutionary discovery we can't even conceive of yet" will lose health and life. Regarding the woeful feelings of working in healthcare is the old story of martyrdom of physicians who battled and conquered things like cholera, tuberculosis, smallpox, etc. They typically were felled by the same thing they sought to destroy. My own uncle contracted hepatitis C from a needlestick in 1978, well before a clear understanding of the disease, and got horribly sick and didn't survive an attempted liver transplant as a result. I plan to ultimately do the same job as him. What am I running into now that, in 2030, people will say "oh fuck, that's bovine hepatitis and it was able to go through latex gloves so there you go". I don't really worry about that because no one makes it out alive and there's no sense in living in fear of something you can't even conceive of, much less prevent.

 

That's about it I guess--many microbiological, biotechnological and epidemiological details of which I had to flog myself with in school omitted for sake of time

i love your fucking posts. no-one else here drops knowledge like you, man.

AHHHHH THIS IS TERRIBLE NEWS!

Hope she recovers quickly....

Broadcast and her voice/lyrics have made my life a better one....

7777777

Seriously! Get well Trish!

xxx's posts for me are like classic novels. I come home drunk and think "oh jesus, look at the length of that" but when I read them I always feel it was well worth my time. Thanks dude, but you have to just made me scared of hospitals.

Please hold the fuck on, Trish .

The year is already starting off with some ol' bullshit .

NO! really hope this works out for the better.

:(

Unfortunately she's passed away. RIP Trish, a beautiful person who made beautiful music

source ?

  On 1/14/2011 at 1:52 PM, the anonymous forumite said:

source ?

It's all over twitter but not sure on the source

It is reported that the message is on Broadcast's facebook page but I can't connect to facebook right now.

  On 1/14/2011 at 1:59 PM, jhonny said:

  On 1/14/2011 at 1:52 PM, the anonymous forumite said:

source ?

It's all over twitter but not sure on the source

I thought you were trolling, but you're right, it is all over Twitter... no reliable source so I hope it's not true. Jesus...

  On 1/14/2011 at 2:02 PM, Iain C said:

  On 1/14/2011 at 1:59 PM, jhonny said:

  On 1/14/2011 at 1:52 PM, the anonymous forumite said:

source ?

It's all over twitter but not sure on the source

 

I thought you were trolling, but you're right, it is all over Twitter... no reliable source so I hope it's not true. Jesus...

It was posted on facebook by her sister (apparently her sister, but she revealed the news about her being ill too). So it does seem true, unfortunately.

I can't see it there... but I'm not that sceptical. Christ, this has really upset me. I'm going for a cigarette.

:(:(:(

Ah fuck.