I have TB?

Question

and whats so bad about it? how will it effect my life?

Answer 1

Well, tuberculosis left untreated is fatal. It may take years to actually kill you, but in the end it will. If it infects the lungs, as it likes to do, the lung tissue will breakdown and die. You will either basically drownd in your own fluids, or the coughing will weaken blood vessels in the lungs and one last coughing fit will cause a rupture of a major vessel and you will die spitting out blood. In the meantime, you will be passing the infection along to other unsuspecting people, and those closest to you as well. In the years before you will begin to experience night sweats, fatigue, and other various ailments, feel short of breath and generally not much like participating in life around you. Your last few years will be sickly and unpleasant. Now, if you decide to be treated, your future looks entirely different. If you have active TB, you will be hospitalized until the drugs take effect and you are no longer a risk to the general population or yourself. If you have reacted to a skin test only, you will not need to be hospitalized. You will be given medication and monitored with x-rays and blood tests for up to a year, and at the end of that time you will go on your merry way, with the recomendation that you have periodic chest x-rays to make sure you stay healthy and fit. Even if you have the worst case scenario and develop a form that is antibiotic resistant, you can still be treated and saved. It might require surgery to remove the diseased lung tissue, but you will still survive and live a quite normal life. TB is a nasty, slow growing disease for the most part, but it kills many people unnecessarily. Which is a real shame, because it is also very easily treated for the most part. In the past, before medications were available, it was not unheard of to have entire families infected and dying of TB. It was such a scourge after WW2 that most of Europe had it, which led the push to develop a vaccine and medications to treat it. Now days, there really is no good excuse for anyone to die of TB. Make no mistake, if it's not treated, you will die of it. It may take 10, 15 years, but you will die in the end. And worse yet, you will give it to other people who don't deserve it, including people you love most. If you actually have TB, please do yourself a favor and get treated. Take the medication, do what ever you need to do to get rid of it. You are valuable to other people, and they are valuable to others as well. It's a serious disease with deadly consequences if not treated, and you are worth more than that.

Answer 2

If not properly managed, it will shorten your life.
You will have to take some care not to pass it around.
Don't try to ingnore it. Deal with it.