Nicole’s illness began not long after a move she had looked forward to for years — a fresh start in the North Carolina mountains. Her story, shared through CDC, describes what it is like to be treated for active tuberculosis (TB) far from family, and what helped her recover.
TB Personal Stories: Nicole. CDC.
Diagnosis
She soon developed a fever, cough and night sweats, and weeks later she was no better. Her doctor suspected severe pneumonia and ordered an X-ray; the results raised suspicion of TB, so fluid from her lung was sent to the lab, and a few days later she was diagnosed with active TB disease.
She knew very little about TB then. She had not realized that anyone can get it, and she kept asking her doctors how long recovery would take and whether she would get better.
Treatment and isolation
After almost two weeks in the hospital she went home, and nurses from the health department came to her house every day to give her medicine. When she did not improve as expected — her night sweats continued and her cough worsened — her medical team found she needed a higher dose of one of her TB medicines. On the new dose she began to get better, and the nurses kept visiting to deliver her medicine and check on her.
That period was the hardest. She was in a new place with no friends or family nearby, too sick to sleep, and frightened — and until she was declared no longer contagious, which took six months, she could not see her son or have any relatives visit. She had also lost a great deal of weight; one nurse took to bringing applesauce or ice cream to have with the medicine, and one day brought two pints from a favorite ice cream shop in Asheville, a kindness Nicole remembers.
Recovery
After seven months of treatment she began to regain her strength, building it up with daily exercise until she could go to the supermarket and explore her new community for the first time. Painting landscapes, something she loved, helped her heal. One day she went alone with her dog to Roan Mountain, on the Appalachian Trail, and slowly hiked through ice and snow — a moment that told her she was going to be all right, and that she later poured into her paintings.
Her message
Nicole now sees her illness as a mixed gift: it was hard, but it connected her with a community of survivors, health care workers and advocates. Her advice to others with TB is to be strong, believe you can get better, and reach out to organizations and other survivors for help. She is part of We Are TB, a network of TB survivors.
Sources
Based on "Nicole’s Story," Tuberculosis, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain, with Nicole’s remarks rewritten in hubnx’s own words.
- The film is the agency's own low-resolution copy, recovered from the Internet Archive's record of cdc.gov.
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.cdc.gov
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