Flight Phase 2098
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The doctors begin working on taking samples and running tests. Thanks to quick chemical assays available in the medical supplies, 87 virus and bacterial infections matching the symptoms are ruled out. As cultures from the infected patients are grown their movements are tracked to try and trace a patern to the infection. The four individuals have all been on active duty for 3 years and are found to have worked or socialized closely. Another seven crew are isolated based on the pattern, one of whom also begins showing early signs of infection.
Hours and days pass as their symptoms worsen. The rash spreads as vomiting and other gastrointestinal distress are added to the list. Then a breakthrough comes, the symptoms and tissue samples match a rare, severe autoimmune disease. It should not be contagious, or come on so strongly so quickly, but it is as good a lead as they can find. Specific antibody tests are unpacked and prove positive; a combination of targeted immunosupressants and hormones designed to make up for damaged tissue are supplied to the patients and the conditions begin to decrease in severity. Detailed examinations for damage prove fruitful and small amounts of targeted medicines available are duplicated in the medbay from existing drugs.
While the symptoms lessen, without knowledge of why the disease struck in the first place or how it spread the quarantine remains, fortunately the extra crew are able to take up the slack as days of isolation turn into weeks. Research can be done only at a snails pace with the facilities on the ship, but several areas are theorized about the origin of the disease, from a reaction to the cryogenic system, long term exposure to the rigors of space travel or another source of infection.
The last turns out to be true, one of the growing samples proves to have the correct combination of temperature and nutrients to reveal a fungus which has no good reason to be in the samples. All the patients are found to be infected, along with 4 of the remaining 6 in isolation and one crew member who was never quarantined or came down with symptoms. The species is a common one, but not one which should have been transported on the ship. Not normally found growing in humans, the theory is that it somehow jumped species and lay dormant for a long period of time, possibly due to the cryogenic process. It appears immune to attempts by the immune system to fight it despite causing such a severe response and grows quite slowly.
Amphotericin B is administered to the patients in a broad attempt to destroy the fungus, and it works. However it is unclear if anyone may still be infected and not showing symptoms, so regular checkups and self checkups are instituted among the crew. The five crew who faced the worst of the infection prove to still have the signs of the autoimmune symptoms, although at a much less severity, as the other drugs are withdrawn during treatment for the fungus. They face scars and possibly a life long chronic disease, however there is hope that the effects will lessen over time without the trigger remaining.
Several theories exist as to where the fungus came from. Seals on the biodiversity bay are intact, and it should not have even been included in the living samples. Coming on board with the crew leaves the possibility that it is hiding in the sleeping crew, or even in the awake ones. And the idea that it may be growing somewhere in the hydroponics and life support systems can not be ruled out.
.2 medical supplies used to diagnose and treat the crew.
5 autoimmune patients added to crew.
Flight Phase 2101-2105
Engineering or other orders?
Event repercussions:
Continue treating the patients with medication?
Throw out the biodiversity bay?
Purge the hydroponic system?
Continue quarantine?
Other ideas?
Name the disease?
Author
Topic: Outpost: Outcast [Heart of Sky] (Read 37910 times)