THERE shouldn’t be a stigma attached to having tuberculosis (TB), says Lindeka Shandu as she recalls her experience with the infection about 10 years ago.
Shandu, who lives in Durban was 22 years old and a college student at the time.
“I had just finished writing my final exams and I started getting flu-like symptoms so, I decided to see a doctor,” she said.
The doctor told her she had flu and gave her antibiotics and cough syrup.
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Shandu completed her treatment but the cough persisted, so she went back to the same doctor who then prescribed more medication.
“The doctor told me it was probably the stress from the exams that caused me to become so ill. I told her I read that if a cough persists, you should test for TB but she brushed it off and told me I didn’t have TB,” said Shandu.
“I would cough continuously for ten minutes. Then it would stop for a few hours and start again. I felt so weak that I couldn’t walk from my bedroom to the bathroom which was only a few meters apart,” she said.
“I was living with family and would text them to bring me water because I was too weak to walk. They saw how ill I was and called my mom to come see me,” she said.
Shandu said her mother was surprised at how much weight she had lost and made an appointment with a physician immediately.
“The physician suspected that I had TB and did tests which confirmed the diagnosis,” she said.
Shandu then started a six-month course which entailed taking five different pills twice a day.
She was told not to default as the TB would worsen and become so aggressive that it could be untreatable. Shandu learnt that this was called multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB.
“It took two months for me to get back to my old self. I had to go to the clinic for check ups and to refill my prescription every month. Luckily none of my family and people I had been in contact with had contracted it,” she said.
As the months went by, the amount of pills Shandu took gradually decreased.
The side effects she experienced from taking the medication were nausea, colour change in stools, increase in appetite, black spots and a rash in her body.
“I was given creams to treat the rash. During the last month of treatment I was down to only taking two pills,” she said.
“I felt like I had been released from jail when I took those last pills. It was a long journey but I knew I had to stick to my treatment if I wanted to get better,” she added.
This World TB Day, on March 24, Shandu advised others to educate themselves about TB instead of believing in fake information received from others.
“There is a stigma attached to having TB that if you have it, then you must have HIV as well. That’s not true. Only trust information from reliable sources,” she said.
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