Day: August 27, 2013
Time: 6:40 PM
Place: Mangalore
I was surfing the net, facebook-ing, Messaging, Yahoo-mail; jumping from one tab to the other and suddenly my eyes froze on an article titled- ‘The end of the journey’. Finding it catchy, I decided to open the link and what I read was a very sad yet a true story.
An African girl, confused and heart-broken on how she caught TB (Tuberculosis). In her own words- “It might have been on a bus since it’s always full in the morning. I used to take one every day to university, but then again I could have caught it anywhere.”
She never coughed; neither did she have night sweats. The only manifestation was loss of weight. Doctors said that might be Pneumonia. After the sputum culture came back negative, she was halfway happy that at least it was not tuberculosis. But the chest x-ray showed something else. Shocked and confused at the same time, she was given a handful of medicines to pop in daily. The disease itself was so debilitating, and those tiny medicines were equally unpalatable yet repetitive at the same time.
As though the misery was not enough- that she got MDR-TB (Multi Drug Resistant Tuberculosis). For this, she was given hell lots of pills, almost 60 to take daily! Yes, this was her dose every day. She used to take 30 in the morning and the same at night. On top of that, injections were torturing her bums daily. That pain made her sick enough to even stand or sit. Anemia, Vitamin B deficiency, and Tuberculosis are two more add-ons.
You might be thinking, why is this story and that here? Being a medicine student, I deal with at least 1 patient of tuberculosis daily. I, too, might have a latent Mycobacterium waiting to show its monstrous part. I’m also scared. I feel bad for those patients who have to take medicines daily that obviously have side effects of their own. World Tuberculosis Day is on 24th March, and my birthday is on that day too. Quite a coincidence with sarcasm laughing on my face, isn’t it?
WHO, DOTS and RNTCP recommend 2+4 months for active new patients; even after that, there’s no 100% guarantee that you will be cured. Like this girl, you might be an MDR-TB patient or, say, even worse, an XDR-TB(Extremely drug-resistant TB) patient, and then your life would be floating in the pool of drugs. This society looks at you from those neglected eyes. Your condition becomes worse day by day. But don’t worry, there is nothing like impossible. Even though these drugs are hard to digest, they are wonder pills to cure TB.
The take home message is- “Even though this disease can tear you apart, the drugs and your family’s support can bring you back on tracks of a healthy disease-free life.”
Read here for more details- http://www.tbcindia.nic.in/rntcp.html and http://www.who.int/publications/guidelines/tuberculosis/en/.
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