Posted: 6/1/2007 10:11:22 AM EDT
Doesn't look that bad.   |
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The funny thing about TB is that even if you live or sleep with someone you won't automatically get it. It was quite common a century ago for husbands or wives to die from TB and their spouses and kids would survive and live to old age. One of the key factors that determines if you get TB is your overall physical condition. Someone who is healthy and well-nourished is far less likely to get TB than someone who is already pretty weak. |
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The average American never knows when he or she gets exposed or gets a minor case. (Hence all the positive PPT skin tests) and if you get the garden variety version, antibiotics kill it off. BUT, if you get the genuine good deal, antibiotic resistant version he got. Yeah, it's probably gonna kill him if they can't find the right magic bullet to kill it first. Generally if not treated successfully, you die from your lungs finally falling apart to the point you can't breathe, if lucky the pneumonia gets you before you asphyxiate. |
CNN Report--TB patient maintains he is married
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It's not a good way to die. Here's the natural course of the disease:
If you want to think of it this way, it's a bit like dying of lung cancer, except TB is a lung cancer you can spread. |
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My girlfriend was up to the point where her lungs were hemorrhaging, and I had to rush her to the ER at Bumrungrad International in Bangkok (Best damned hospital I've ever dealt with, and I used to work at the Univ. of Mich. Hospitals). A few days in ICU, a couple of weeks in a private room, a bunch of CT scans and other tests, and found out she had TB. It took awhile for the sputum results to come back. She had been coughing up blood for some time, but had hid it from me. 90 days with the both of us in isolation, and a ton of antibiotics for her, and she's fine and has regained all of her strength, and is back on full duty with the police. So far, I'm negative. I get another skin test done in a month. Hopefully, I'm still negative. It's been a year and a half, so, "so far, so good," as the guy falling off the tall building said as he passed the 10th floor...  I don't mind telling you, it scares the living dogshit out of me. She damned near died, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it. VERY bad feeling. |