My Life as a TB Patient - Part 1

Year 2009 was a bad year for me. My life has some changes since then. I was diagnosed with the Pulmonary Tuberculosis (TB) in May 2009 due to I was having bad cough for months and I also didn’t know how did I get such illness until todate. After a year plus treatment, I am just recovered from such illness. So, I would like to share with you my life as a TB patient with you all. For your information, pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) is a contagious bacterial infection that mainly involves the lungs, but may spread to other organs.

In the beginning year of 2009, I was started having cough on and off, sometimes was having phlegm too. I thought I was just having the normal flu and seek for the normal treatment, i.e. taking the cough syrup from the normal GP. Since then, I was started to feel tired easily and always fall sick, having fever. At night time, I was having heavy sweat while I was sleeping as I thought the weather was hot and caused me to sweat a lot. I was also having wheezing too. I was also losing weight at that time. Moreover I was also feeling tired easily at that time. I really did not know that those were the symptoms of the TB sickness. When I was having that night sweating, tired easily and fall sick easily, I was thinking that I was having stress from my work. I really did not have the thought of that I would diagnose the contagious disease.

Anyway, after coughing of few months, my mother took me for the chest X-ray and the sputum examination. OMG, when the results out, doctor said that I was having TB. So I went to the private hospital to seek for the treatment of TB.After seeking the treatment, then only I know that night sweating, wheezing are the symptoms of the TB. Thus, now I would like to provide some information of TB to you here.

Symptoms of TB

• Cough (sometimes producing phlegm)
• Coughing up blood
• Excessive sweating, especially at night
• Fatigue
• Fever
• Unintentional weight loss
• Breathing difficulty
• Chest pain
• Wheezing

Exams and Tests for TB

• Clubbing of the fingers or toes (in people with advanced disease)
• Enlarged or tender lymph nodes in the neck or other areas
• Fluid around a lung
• Unusual breath sounds (crackles)
• Biopsy of the affected tissue (rare)
• Bronchoscopy
• Chest CT scan
  Chest x-ray
• Interferon-gamma blood test such as the QFT-Gold test to test for TB infection
• Sputum examination and cultures
• Thoracentesis
• Tuberculin skin test

After I found out that had diagnosed the TB, I started my TB medical treatment and having self quarantined at home as instructed by the doctor. I will blog about my treatment and self quarantine life in my next blog. Hope that you will follow then.