The Kissing Bug

Primea

The first person in a family to graduate college

How did Tia graduate?

With a colostomy bag next to her

What system does the kissing bug attack?

The gastrointestinal system

What does the kissing bug do to the body?

It makes the large intestine begin to lose shape. Food begins to collect in the colon and their belly begins to swell. Toxins can then invade the body and kill the host

Indigent patient

a patient who has no visible means of income or whose income is insufficient for the subsistence of his family.

Where did Tia go to get treatment?

She flew to Manhattan from Colombia to get treatment for her disease

How did Tia get sick?

She ate a food contaminated by an insect

Official classification for kissing bugs

Triatoma infestans

How long could a kissing bug live from a single feeding of a man's finger?

Four and a half months

What did kissing bug come to be known as?

Triatomine insects. They were also classified as the family of assassin bugs (Reduviidae) for their vampire like tendencies. It's also called a bloodsucker and vinchuca

How do triatomine get to their sleeping victims?

By slipping out from the crevices in the walls of mud houses. They gained the name vinchuca from this

Why was the triatomine given the name 'the kissing bug'?

Because it was categorized by biting people on the lips

What parasite does the triatomine contain?

A parasite that can kill the human heart

What did Tia call her disease?

Chagas, because she liked to think it was named after the person who discovered it (though he didn't)

What did physicians use to think?

That diseases were transmitted when rotting matter generated polluted air-miasma

T. b. gambiense

A parasite that jumps from flies to humans, sneaking into a person's central nervous system and causing human African trypanosomiasis, a disease that left untreated leads to paranoia, coma, and death

What happened in Rio in 1902?

There was an outbreak of malaria. As a result, the health inspectors began to tear down houses to search for breeding grounds for mosquitoes linked to yellow fever

Trypanosoma cruzi

A type of kissing bug that causes sleeping sickness. Name after Chagas's mother

What do the cruzi parasites do?

They leave lesion on the hearts of the wall

How does the bug end up in a person's eye?

After they bite a person, the bug defecates. The person can then touch that spot, and then in turn touch their eye, spreading the disease to the eye

Relationship between Tia and narrator?

They did not get along. The narrator thinks that Tia liked her sister more than her, which appeared to be true

Who did Tia marry?

A man named Tio Papeles who later died from stomach cancer

What is the main character's sexuality?

She is bisexual and ended up dating a trans male

How did Tia die?

She died in the cardiac ICU on a ventilator after her heart stopped three times

What are baby kissing bugs called?

Nymphs

How many species of kissing bug?

140, but only five are capable of transmitting t cruzi.

Benznidazole

A cue for people for when they initially come into contact with T. cruzi

Is it possible to eradicate T. cruzi?

No, because you would have to eradicate all wildlife to do so

What is T. cruzi?

A parasite that infects the kissing bug, which in turn, transmits to the humans

Packchanian

An Armenian researcher who came to America after the genocide of the Ottoman Empire in 1920. He researched T. cruzi and discovered that it could be transmitted to mice, guinea pigs, and rhesus monkeys. He also performed experiments on humans to learn more about T. cruzi

Is there a way to not locate T. cruzi?

Yes, it is difficult to find T. cruzi in the bloodstream once a person is in the chronic stage of the disease. The search has to focus on the antibodies

Martin Shkreli

A horrible man who skyrocketed the price of life saving medicine just to make himself richer

How long had T. cruzi been in Texas?

At least a thousand years

When did the narrator first catch a kissing bug?

She went out with two men (Adam and Justin) and they collectively caught three bugs. Together, they would distract the bug and someone else would catch it with a baggie. All of the bugs were infected with T. cruzi

When did the US military begin to hunt for kissing bugs?

1964

Who is Uno?

A trained military dog who went into cardiac arrest due to T. cruzi

When did the military start fighting back against the kissing bug?

When, in 2006, over 8 percent of a military bases dogs were infected with T. cruzi

Why are the amount of kissing bugs drastically increasing in Texas?

Because of the drastic increase in housing

How does the temperature affect the kissing bugs?

The bugs tend to feed more frequently in warmer temperatures

What did the CDC do in 2015?

They granted Texas researcher half a million dollars-spread out across five years- to raise awareness among health care providers about the kissing bug disease

What state has the highest infection rate for kissing bug disease?

California with 70k, while Texas has about half

Who does the kissing bug mostly affect?

Latinx people

What does T. cruzi turn into when inside a host's cells?

A lavender coin

What type of parasite is T. cruzi?

trypanosome

When did the FDA approve blood screenings for donors?

2016

Kinetoplast

A special pouch of DNA strictly in T. cruzi

What is in Dr. Kirchoff's flask?

He has a flask containing millions of T. cruzi that have been sustained in a liquid culture since the 1940s. These parasite think that they are within a kissing bug

Congenital Chagas disease

When T. cruzi is transferred from the mother to the child in utero

Who is Janet?

A woman that the narrator interviewed about T. cruzi in newborns. The woman was from South America and came into contact with the kissing bug often, so she became infected.

What happened during Janet's pregnancy?

She started bleeding immensely from her uterus, but the doctors sent her home because nothing was wrong. Eventually, she gave birth to a premature baby, Louis, at thirty-weeks. T. cruzi had killed the tissue in Louis's heart. Thankfully, he would live, making him the second baby on CDC record to survive T. cruzi

What screening guideline did the federal government make in 2006?

They made a guideline of illnesses to screen newborn children for, totaling up to 29 diseases. The Kissing Bug disease was not on the list because of finance reasons

How long do u need to live in the USA to qualify for Medicare?

Five years

Dr. Marcus

Also known as La Doctora. She was a cardiologist that was determined to help Janet with her fight against T. cruzi

bifascicular block

Interruption of the electrical impulses that determine how fast the heart beats

Who is Typhoid Mary?

A healthy carrier of typhoid in 1907 Long Island. She was quarantined by the state for two decades in the name of public health where she died

Who is Candance?

A middle aged woman who contracted T. cruzi by staying over at her parents house for a few hours. Her mother told her that she was special for having such a rare disease, but it embarrassed her until she decided to speak out about it.

Who is Maira?

A fearless woman from Central America who has T. cruzi. She migrated to America after her entire village was massacred. She attend a clinic in California where Chagas is well known and she receives great help there

Dr. Meymandi

A woman in Los Angles county who created a cardiologist clinic for people with Chagas. She had tested thousands of patients for T. cruzi, and have found that an average of 14% of Los Angles county residents that have had heart failure are also infected. Thanks to her work, it has been found that an estimated thirty thousand people in Los Angles County as infected

Who is Carlos?

A man from South America who was infected with T. cruzi for years. The parasite had begun to eat away at his heart, so much so that he required a heart transplant. Before his transplant, he would walk around with a bag strapped to his chest to make his heart beat

How did doctors in Latin America use to check for kissing bug disease

By placing disease-free kissing bugs into a small box and having them feed on a patient. Later, they would dissect that bug and search for T. cruzi to confirm if they had a parasite

Who is Javier?

Another man from Latin America who did not believe that he had the kissing bug even though everyone he knew did

Who are more likely to have HIV?

Gay and bisexual African American men

What outranked AIDS as the most infectious killer in the world in 2015?

tuberculosis

What race was more affected by COVID?

Black and latinos

What is an ICD?

It stands for implantable cardiovascular defibrillator. It is a procedure that requires a pocket made under the chest wall, slipping in a device that looks like a giant silver coin and wiring that silver coin to the heart. The defibrillator monitors for irregular heartbeats and shocks the heart back to life if the organ stops.

What is onchocerciasis

A disease transmitted by a blackfly that can cause blindness. Also known as river disease

Tia Margaria

Another one of the narrator's aunts who died of T. cruzi.. Her heart had enlarged so much that it had covered up her left lung, causing her to die of suffication

How many people are infected with this disease in there United States?

300,000