Tuberculosis is all around here, the very place we exist,whereever we are. It destroys all our designs, affects many things, it keeps us away from our work, people, specially from 'then friends', relationships, career. Even takes away all the smiles, replace them with grins, unpleasant ones. It involves oppression, for you will be shrunk to the very definition of the illness, it involves people passing comments, uneasy questions, some will appear as saviors, some give motivational speeches , the illness has everything, the power, the reach,the bacteria got a way with everything that happens with you.
When the patient takes the responsibility of sticking to the treatment, to the very traumatizing treatment, when we mask ourselves to not let that bacteria go anywhere else but get killed inside us what we get in return is a long list of wrong assumptions about the same. The medical reason for physical isolation maybe unavoidable but what cannot be understood is the mental isolation, very subtly operated towards patients, TB patients. Me.
TB made me get everything new, new relations, new connections, realizations, new masks, new medicines, new friend requests here, new chats. Getting rid of the TB bacteria is a long process, so uncertainty hovers over everything , some are drug induced. In the void fear fills everywhere. So what needs to be done to not make TB patients write sad notes like this, is to listen, about TB, read stories of TB survivors from whom patients like me take strength, to know about the governments that makes it harder for us, to know about the ones who had to give up due to lack of medicines, the ones who couldn't cope with the treatment, to know about the ones pushed away only because they were ill, to consider our fight against everything that's messed up coz of TB, stop feeding us with shame, stop asking me 'How you got TB? ' when you know it's airborne, I didn't see the bacteria, so I don't know.
Drug resistant TB is scary but scarier is what follows after the diagnosis, the shame, the stigma, which is harder to cope than the treatment. TB is political. But we are not numbers in a government budget than lives in flesh and blood.Educate yourselves about the same. It's a common thing to have noted that most people do not know how to deal with people in pain. We are all struggling, let's make it easy for each other.
When the patient takes the responsibility of sticking to the treatment, to the very traumatizing treatment, when we mask ourselves to not let that bacteria go anywhere else but get killed inside us what we get in return is a long list of wrong assumptions about the same. The medical reason for physical isolation maybe unavoidable but what cannot be understood is the mental isolation, very subtly operated towards patients, TB patients. Me.
TB made me get everything new, new relations, new connections, realizations, new masks, new medicines, new friend requests here, new chats. Getting rid of the TB bacteria is a long process, so uncertainty hovers over everything , some are drug induced. In the void fear fills everywhere. So what needs to be done to not make TB patients write sad notes like this, is to listen, about TB, read stories of TB survivors from whom patients like me take strength, to know about the governments that makes it harder for us, to know about the ones who had to give up due to lack of medicines, the ones who couldn't cope with the treatment, to know about the ones pushed away only because they were ill, to consider our fight against everything that's messed up coz of TB, stop feeding us with shame, stop asking me 'How you got TB? ' when you know it's airborne, I didn't see the bacteria, so I don't know.
Drug resistant TB is scary but scarier is what follows after the diagnosis, the shame, the stigma, which is harder to cope than the treatment. TB is political. But we are not numbers in a government budget than lives in flesh and blood.Educate yourselves about the same. It's a common thing to have noted that most people do not know how to deal with people in pain. We are all struggling, let's make it easy for each other.
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