By Arjun Kumar SV, SATB Fellow
Life changes in ways we often cannot foresee. I am a 19 year old medical student from Bangalore. I was carrying on with my daily life until around august last year, I experienced coughing and confusing, everyday temperature in the evening. As these symptoms did not wear off I decided to get myself tested and was diagnosed with TB. As a medical student, experiencing these symptoms, I was aware that it could be TB. I was not scared.
I was diagnosed at an early stage, I only experienced an evening rise of temperature and productive cough. My family and friends were quite scared and upset and found it hard to believe. They were genuinely supportive to me throughout the treatment.I started my treatment right after I was diagnosed and it lasted for around 6 months. As I was aware about TB and its various aspects, acceptance of it came easy to me. However, surviving TB wasn’t easy.
At the start of the treatment, taking 6 medicines everyday felt like a punishment, but as time passed I got used to the process. The side effects of medication took a huge toll on me. I felt drowsy and sluggish around the clock and faced psychological issues. I was lucky as I didn’t face any kind of stigma or discriminatory behaviour from my family, friends or close relatives. This made the fight against TB a lot easier.
There was, however, this constant fear of TB sputum converting into an MDR/XDR TB, which affected my mental health. It is important to realize that your mental health plays a vital role in the fight against TB. I am not straight and was already going through stress of coming out and TB added to my woes. At that time, I took the help of meditation to cope with all the mental health issues I faced as a side effect due to medications, my constant fears and restlessness due to TB. I realized my identity also influenced my mental health with TB As the first round of treatment ended, the symptoms started to fade away which made me feel better.
I had to miss college due to the two months of isolation phase but when I was back attending lectures, it was heartening to see that I didn’t face any sort of stigma from my fellow classmates or professors. I was lucky to be enrolled at a medical educational institution, but I know if it would have been any other place, I would have been subjected to discrimination and stigmatizing behaviour.
I completed my treatment from a private hospital and I felt I would be more comfortable with private hospitals and their services. I was rendered quality, stigma-free care and all my needs were taken care of at the hospital. I was able and allowed to communicate openly with my doctor, ask questions to them and they were well answered. However, I came to understand with my experience that there is a clear lack of awareness regarding TB care and support. There are a lot of instances where many patients hesitate to talk or express themselves freely regarding their disease due to the social stigma present around TB.
As someone from the profession, I know there are common occurrences of misdiagnosis while testing for TB, which indicates poor facilities and equipment for TB testing and diagnosis, especially in public hospitals.
Though I didn’t face this situation, thankfully, I believe, proper awareness among people regarding TB and its aspects can help solve this issue. Moreover, the lack of quality care and reliability in government hospitals made me choose to get treated at a private one. The current system of government healthcare and support lacks proper financial backing. It needs more financial support to provide quality healthcare to patients and cater to their needs on time. Besides, I felt, there need to be better provisions in place to provide free nutritious food which plays a crucial role in our treatment and economic support like travel allowances during the time of treatment for people who are economically weak.
Getting diagnosed with TB made me realize that no-one can have a complete healthy life, but taking care of yourself can make a huge difference in your journey through life. We as humans are all prone to get affected by diseases, therefore we need to make ourselves stronger mentally and physically. The difficult part in this journey for me was to endure the mental health issues. With the help of meditation and strong support provided by my family and friends, I was able to do better.
India today has taken the path to fight against TB, so we need to ensure there is more awareness about TB and sensitivity towards TB patients among people. We all need to contribute to making this fight stronger by educating ourselves about TB.