My name is Paul and I live in London. I have been HIV-positive for all of my adult life. I was diagnosed when I was 19 years old. A few years after becoming infected with the virus, I started to become sick. I would find myself from time to time being admitted to hospital. It is one of these admissions in 1995 that I became infected with Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.
A patient had been on the ward already had the disease. He had come from San Paulo in Brazil, to Lisbon in Portugal and finally ended up in the West London Hospital that I too was being treated in. I remember the cough that he had. It used to keep me, and the others who were sharing the hospital ward, awake at night.
Whilst in hospital I become infected by him. At first I didn't known for three months there was a problem. As time went by I started to feel week, to lose weight and I developed a cough and some slight chest pain. I didn't ever think that it could be something like tuberculosis. I like many others thought that the disease had been eradicated years ago and was no longer problem. How wrong I was!
When they discovered that I had TB, the doctors were very worried. The prognosis for those who have TB and HIV, without treatment, is not good. I was isolated in a small room for nearly three months whilst I took many tablets to try and cure me of the MDR-TB. I was very lonely in the room. Not many people came to visit me and I wasn't allowed to leave it. The nurses and doctors who came into the room always had to wear masks, and it was strange not to the faces of the people who were talking to me. So much can be communicated by a smile. I didn't see one for all of the time I was in there.
I felt at times that I was going 'stir crazy'. I wanted to get out, but I knew that if I did there was a chance that I might infect someone else. In time however, I started to feel better. The night sweats and fever stopped, I was coughing less and I started to put back on some of the weight that I lost.
Eventually the doctor came to see me and said that I was non infectious and that I could go home. I was so pleased to finally be allowed to leave the room. But the doctor told me that my treatment didn't stop there and that I may be on treatment for sometime. Because I had a drug-resistant strain of TB and the drugs that they were using were not as effective than the first-line treatments that doctors prefer to use, it was important that I took all of my medication. If I did not the doctor told me that there was a chance that the MDR-TB might come back and that it would be harder to treat. It was also important for other people that I did not become infectious again as I might pass the disease on to others.
