An Aunt that lives with Thandi’s family has a cough that hasn’t gone away in a long time and she’s also lost lots of weight.
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The doctor says the aunt has TB!
They say the whole family need to take daily preventative medicine called “TB Preventative Treatment”.
The doctor explains that even though Thandi seems heathy, it is essential that she take the TB Preventative Treatment.
Thandi starts to feel bad, she feels nauseous and doesn’t want to eat.
Her parents tell her she has no symptoms of TB. She thinks the medicine makes her feel bad.
Thandi’s Aunt eventually gets better.
The doctor says Thandi and her family no longer needs the preventative treatment and can stop taking it!
Thandi develops a cough and the doctor says they need to do something called the Mantoux test or tuberculin skin test.
She uses a needle to put something in Thandi’s forearm that makes a tiny bump and tells her to come back in a few days.
A few days later her bump has grown…
The doctor says it means she had TB!
Mike O’ is now in her lungs, he’s made up of bacteria called Mycobacterium Tuberculosis and causes TB.
The preventative treatment was to stop him getting into Thandi.
Because Mike O’ is now in Thandi, the doctor says she will have to take even more medicine each day, and the side effects will be worse!
The doctor says Thandi needs to come into the clinic each day so someone at the clinic can watch her take her medicine, they called it “Directly Observed Therapy”.
Due to the medicine Thandi stops feeling any of her TB symptoms, but her side effects have never been worse!
Meanwhile, Mike O’ goes into hiding, but is still there…
Thandi’s TB progresses quickly, she loses lots of weight and feels tired.
The side effects get better, Thandi wonders if she should
keep taking her medicine…
Because Thandi didn’t take her medicine and the TB progressed rapidly,
Mike’O has spread and is now not just in Thandi’s lungs, but in several places!
When visiting the clinic, the doctor tells Thandi that the TB has changed!
It seems it’s now multidrug-resistant, so she needs different, stronger medicine, that will have worse side effects…
In addition to losing lots of weight, having a cough, and night-sweats,
Thandi notices there’s blood every time she goes to the toilet,
and her back hurts a lot.
Thandi has been going to the clinic each day for her Directly Observed
Therapy, her side effects have been getting quite bad, she still wonders
if she should keep taking the medicine each day…
After many months of going to the clinic each day, the doctor finally tells Thandi that the TB is cured!
As wonderful as this news is, because of how severe the TB was, Thandi always feels breathless and the
doctor thinks that wont ever go away, they called it a chronic symptom that she will now have
the rest of her life.
palliative care
cured!
congratulations, cured – post TB,
some blurb on how TB can affect people differently – Tandi has been lucky and by sticking to her treatment she has fully recovered from TB.
cured but chronic
some blurb on the survival rate of TB and what some long term post TB chronic conditions are – that Thandi has been lucky and many people who take their medication intermittently increase the chance of developing MDR-TB, spreading it, and developing complications…
unfortunately… death, but made to sound less blunt.
Some blurb on the mortality rate of untreated TB and how it can result in other people catching it
Thandi has been taking her new medicine regime for a short while, but
she can already feel the side effects are worse – her stomach still aches, but her sweat
now comes out orange, and her hands and feet feel numb and tingly too.
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