Who is Seonai?
Seonai Gordon is a 40 something female battling TB. She is originally from Scotland, with no patriotic feelings therefore considering herself as a human being, address; The World. She is well travelled, quite smart and has never knowingly hurt another person in any way.
Seonai is a former nurse, turned journalist and you can Google her name - 'Seonai Gordon' - to read some of her other articles. She welcomes emails but cannot claim to be in a position to offer medical advice. She can, however, put you in touch with the right people if you ask.
I'm really late with my column
this week so apologies to all those people who reminded me!
I've been having a hard time
this last week, hence the reason for writing this late. With TB you
get days/weeks when you just feel totally wiped out and don't have
the energy to do anything. I don't know if this one is down to my
TB drugs, the homeopathic remedy I took or just the TB itself. I've
had burning in the area where my cavity is and more problems with vomiting
every time I cough. it's been tough this week.
Some of the reactions and attitudes
of other people when they find out I have TB have made me very aware
that this disease is seen as very different to other diseases.
I suppose it's because it can be infectious, but there's another
reason and that's why I'm here, writing this on a sunny, Sunday
evening. The second reason is that people are actually scared to talk
about it openly and there is surprisingly little information out there
about it
I hang out in a social circle
of pretty switched on professional people and you'd be amazed at how
few of them knew that TB even still existed never mind how it's caught
and treated. To me, this is shocking. I mean the schools and the media
surely have a responsibility to make the public aware of the fact that
over 8,000 people in the UK at this moment have TB and that great numbers
are dying from it in the rest of the world. They ought to spread the
word so that those who get/have/confront it have some understanding
about their illness and what to expect. And equally as important is
the fact that, if the education department and the papers were doing
their jobs properly, people like me wouldn't feel so stigmatized to
cries of "Really, I thought that had been eradicated.".
I've had people physically
move away when they found out I had TB. Been refused permission to stay
the night at a friend's flat, been told I can't come round because
it might be dangerous for the children/granny etc, and been refused
entry to my son's school. All this is ridiculous and does nothing
to help the sufferer. It's not my friends' fault though, it's
the lack of information that's at fault. There might be lots of organizations
across the globe working for the treatment etc of TB but it's Joe
Public that needs this information so that they might empower themselves
and ask questions. Again I'll reiterate, without intent to undermine
the following, that almost everyone knows what Cancer and HIV is, very
little understand TB and the fact that it still kills MILLIONS every
year. It makes me quite mad.
I sometimes feel like having
a t-shirt printed with YES I HAVE TB, BUT I AM HONESTLY NOT INFECTIOUS
ANY MORE.
Next week - The Park Bench Chronicles
- Seonai’s World /Column 8/ 27-09-07
- Seonai’s World /Column 7/02-09-07
- Seonai’s World /Column 6/ 22-08-07
- Seonai’s World /Column 5/ 15-08-07
- Seonai’s World /Column 4/ 08-08-07
- Seonai’s World /Column 3/ 30-07-07
- Seonai’s World /Column 2/23-07-07
- Seonai’s World /Column 1/12-07-07
To contact Seonai by email click here
