My name is Lynne, and I am a normal teenage girl living in middle Tennessee.
I'd never really been sick in my life until I was diagnosed with
Tuberculosis. Starting in November of 2005, I began coughing and losing
weight even though I ate nothing but sweets and desserts multiple times
every day. I had a month or so of waking up in the middle of the night
drenched in sweat and had to get up and change clothes. But then the night
sweats went away, and the cough continued.
I had visited the clinic in my town, but I was diagnosed as just having bad allergies. I was given some antibiotics, and they helped a little but not much. As the months went by, I deteriorated into almost nothing. All of my bones protruded from my skin, and I weighed only 105 lbs, and my weight was continuing to drop. My skin was white, the whitest white I'd ever seen. I was always in a bad mood, never wanting to hang out with any of my friends and not being close to anyone.
One morning in the first week of August, I woke up at about 5 am coughing. But this time, I noticed a dark splash of something had come from my mouth and landed on my pillow. I got up and turned on the light and saw that it was blood. By the time I realized what it was, more was starting to come up by way of coughing. I was in the bathroom coughing and coughing and blood was flowing and flowing as if a faucet that flowed blood was coming from me. I panicked and cried, and my mother took me to the same walk-in clinic as I had gone to in April. They took X-rays and did a TB skin test on me.
The X-rays showed that my left lung was completely white, but the TB skin test was negative. They gave me some antibiotics to take for walking pneumonia. I woke up the next day coughing up blood again. I went back to the clinic and was given antibiotic shots and a blood test. The next morning I woke up coughing up blood yet again. I returned to the clinic; this time would be the last time. I was found to have a temperature of 105, and I wasn't even feeling ill. I was pre-admitted to hospital where I would remain for a week. I spent a week not allowed to leave my room and under the careful, cautious watch of many doctors and residents. I was tested for CF, cancer, AIDS, and plenty of other illnesses. When I left the hospital, I still was not diagnosed.
The next day, the head of the TB Clinic for my county came to my house and told me I had TB. I was isolated at my home from August 7-November 3. At one point, I got drug-induced hepatitis due to the overdose of medicine I was given every day. I missed school, where I was enrolled in all AP and Honors classes, yet I still managed to come out with all As and a few Bs. I finally caught up with my school work by May of this year. I just finished treatment 2 weeks ago... an entire 10 months of it. We're not sure where I derived the disease from, my being in the "least least likely" category to ever obtain the disease.
I want everyone to know my story, and I want this disease to be stopped.
