Before I was exposed to TB I heard one of our relatives had fluid in his lungs. I advised his wife to send him to the hospital as soon as possible and said he would find a cure soon.
Later on I found out that he went to see someone by himself to have the fluid drained and start self-treatment.
"You should take it seriously. He needs to take the whole treatment course," I told his wife.
"Within a year, he felt weak and lost some weight"
"But the recent results were good and his TB is not infectious any longer," replied his wife. So he took Streptomycin for two weeks and Isoniazid for about a month. It seems they continued this inappropriate regimen for a number of months.
Within a year, he felt weak and lost some weight. At the time when I was in hospital, his wife used to come to see me and ask for advice. She told me that her husband's health was getting worse and that there was no other option but to put him in hospital.
I was glad to hear it because I wished for him to take the whole course of treatment and get cured.
Finally he went to the hospital. As a result of his self-treatment, the TB had spread through each part of his lungs. Moreover, three of his children at home had TB symptoms. This is the consequence of self-treatment. It was then that I understood the proverb: "Even for those who conceal the disease, it will come out in the end".
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TB & Me
Non-FictionTB&ME is a collaborative blogging project by patients being treated for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in locations all around the world by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). They are writing about their experiences o...
