my name is Kristen and if there's one thing you know about me it's that I love to travel.
my boyfriend who's my now husband is my travel companion and we've gone everywhere even though I was traveling around the world I had no idea I was at risk for TB.
my husband and I are fairly cautious travelers we always check the State Department we check the CDC recommendations for which vaccines we should be getting.
I have every vaccine you need for all of the countries I visited and never was there any mention about being at risk for TB.
the more fun stuff that we would do like take 24 hour train rides through India and take boat rides through Indonesia bus rides through Southeast Asia long plane rides to South Africa.
something, one of those things got me sick and I had no idea because throughout all of that travel I never felt sick and I came home and over time about the course of eight months I started to develop a little bit of a cough and that cough eventually turned into coughing up a little bit of blood and that's when people started to pay attention so they did a panel and looked for TB and sure enough I had TB.
immediately the doctor called me back. I've never had a response from a doctor so quickly ever in my life and suddenly everybody sort of descended upon me and quickly made me aware that I was walking around with something fairly contagious.
I had no idea where I had contracted it but I knew I was fairly sick and included about eight weeks of being quarantined by myself at home.
I couldn't have any contact with people in supermarkets.
at work I had to tell my friends and family that I had contracted TB and that in the course of the eight months that I had the illness and I was around them I might have infected them as well they then had to go and get checked and make sure they didn't have it either.
of course one of the first things that the Public Health Department did was have me go ahead and get tested we found out that my husband had LTBI.
that's the latent TB infection. I have got a potentially deadly disease that is in my body. it fortunately has not you know turned into its more deadly state yet. I don't have a lung infection that's you know gonna kill me but that could happen and it may very well happen at some point you know over the rest of my lifetime unless I get treated.
why in the world would I not go through that treatment you know? and the treatment for LTBI is significantly less impactful on my life and my body. it's still a lot of antibiotics. gosh you know I stop myself from potentially developing a much much much more serious condition so I'd be walking around with this infection and have no idea of it.
I may have gotten it at the same time she got a latent infection and mine just never turned into an active infection, actually an active TB situation, and hers did.
one of the more fun ways that I was able to stay sane through the process was documenting my journey on snapchat and Instagram and I think that's a little bit unusual because there's a little bit of shame associated with having TB sometimes but for me it was an outlet and it was a way to have a sense of humor about taking ten pills a day like a champ.
luckily today I'm healthy and happy and I cured it but had I known about this disease, had I known that the places that I was traveling were TB hot spots, I would have come home and taken a test and caught it before it ever turned into anything bad.
the latent TB infection is treatable. maybe luck of the draw. maybe I got it from her. who knows. I like to say I got it from her but as I understand it in many parts of the world you've got thousands and thousands and thousands of people of walking around with LTBI, that you know it's a little bit of a time bomb you know. it's they may or may not get sick at some point and that may or may not proliferate the disease in the United States. we you know have the luxury of being able to get tested, being able to get treated for LTBI, and sort of stopping the spread of a disease in its tracks, and you know in a very small way I'm really proud to be a part of that and sort of help stop that spread.
I wouldn't have changed my travel plans. I would have gone, I would have adventured the same way that I did but I would have come home and I would have just checked did I have exposure because I would have known if I had exposure that I could have treated it with a little bit of medication and my life would have gone on and everything would have been fine.
I feel lucky that I'm healthy and traveling again today but it was quite an ordeal to go through so for anybody who's recently got a diagnosis the good news is you're gonna start feeling better and so you should not worry about how you contracted TB. you should just be glad that you found it and that you can be part of preventing others from getting it and know that in just a short while you're gonna feel okay again - and that your life is gonna resume just like normal.
