Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Mary LaskerMary Lasker
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 999

Lasker:

No, they take part of the intestine and make a new bladder, as I understand it, and when I heard that his tumor had spread and realized that we had no drug, or no group of drugs, that was going to stop this, I was so mad, I was so angry. I felt kind of a rush of fury going through me, because I felt it was such an outrage we'd spent so much money and had done so little on the clinical side, that I realized that I probably was going to get sick.

Well, a couple of days passed and sure enough, I came forth with shingles, and I could associate it with this moment of being so angry.

Q:

You had no indication of anything before that then?

Lasker:

Well, I had no indication except that I had felt a little tired and I had a little slight -- well, I'd felt fatigued the last few weeks that I'd been in Europe. But this information was just enough to -- I only was in a sufficiently precarious state immunlogically so that shingles, which are the end result of German measles and they still remain in your body, the virus still remains in your body, can leap forth and come out as shingles, as herpes zoster.

Now, this is something I never knew until I've been recently reading medical papers on shingles.

Q:

You hadn't had German measles since you were a child, had you?

Lasker:

I hadn't had it since a child. Isn't that amazing? I really had a very severe case of it, and the result was that I did practically nothing the whole month of October or the whole month





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help