"Richard Preston - The Hot Zone2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preston Richard)

He deteriorated rapidly after the surgery, and his kidneys began to
fail. He appeared to be dying. At that time, Antonia Bagshawe, his
physician, had to travel abroad, and he came under the care of a doctor
named David Silverstein. The prospect of kidney failure and dialysis for
Dr. Musoke created a climate of emergency at the hospital-he was well
liked by his colleagues, and they didn't want to lose him. Silverstein
began to suspect that Musoke was suffering from an unusual virus. He
collected some blood from his patient and drew off the serum, which is a
clear, golden-colored liquid that remains when the red cells are removed
from the blood. He sent some tubes of frozen serum to laboratories for
testing-to the National Institute of Virology in Sandringham, South
Africa, and to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.
Then he waited for results.

DIAGNOSIS

DAVID SILVERSTEIN LIVES IN Nairobi, but he owns a house near Washington,
D.C. One day in the summer recently, when he was visiting the United
States to tend to some business, I met him in a coffee shop in a shopping
mall not far from his home. We sat at a small table, and he told me about
Monet and Musoke cases. Silverstein is a slender, short man in his late
forties, with a mustache and glasses, and he has an alert, quick gaze.
Although he is an American, his voice carries a hint of Swahili accent.
On the day that I met him, he was dressed in a denim jacket and blue
jeans, and he was nicely tanned, looking fit and relaxed. He is a pilot,


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and he flies his own plane. He has the largest private medical practice
in East Africa, and it has made him a famous figure in Nairobi. He is the
personal physician of Daniel arap Moi, the president of Kenya, he travels
with President Moi when Moi goes abroad. He treats all the important
people in East Africa: the corrupt politicians, the actors and actresses
who get sick on safari, the decayed English-African nobility. He traveled
at the side of Diana, Lady Delamere, as her personal physician when she
was growing old, to monitor her blood pressure and heartbeat (she wanted
to carry on with her beloved sport of deep-sea fishing off the Kenya
coast, although she had a heart condition), and he was also Beryl
Markham's doctor. Markham, the author of West with the Night, a memoir of
her years as an aviator in East Africa, used to hang out at the Nairobi
Aero Club, where she had a reputation for being a slam-bang, two-fisted
drinker. ("She was a well-pickled old lady by the time I came to her.")
His patient Dr. Musoke has himself become a celebrity, in the annals of
disease. "I was treating Dr. Musoke with supportive care" Silverstein
said to me. "That was all I could do. I tried to give him nutrition, and
I tried to lower his fevers when they were high. I was basically taking
care of somebody without a game plan."
One night, at two o'clock in the morning, Silverstein's telephone