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Kate started feeling ill almost as soon as she became pregnant — like a bad
cold, then a constant cough and night sweats.
**"When you're pregnant, there's a certain amount of you that expects to
feel a little run down and feel a little horrible."**
That sentence is why this story exists. Pregnancy supplies an explanation for
almost any symptom, and it delayed the question for months.
The cough continued. Her throat became so sore she could barely swallow, and
she would wake and cough for fifteen minutes before starting the day. Her
primary care doctor suspected pneumonia; she did not improve. She saw a number
of doctors, and none of them could work out what was causing it.
After several months she could hardly eat, and was **losing weight when she
should have been gaining it** — which worried everyone.
Seventy-five days
At a routine antenatal check-up her obstetrician found her seriously
dehydrated and sent her straight to hospital.
**"When I went to the hospital, I thought I'd be there, maybe overnight,
maybe a few days at the longest. But I didn't leave for 75 days. And we
weren't prepared for that. My husband wasn't prepared for that. I never said
goodbye to my son."**
She was diagnosed with active TB disease. She began the standard
medicines, developed side effects, and her regimen was adjusted — **which made
the treatment take longer.**
And the thing she found hardest was not the illness:
**"There was no way for anybody to really tell me what the effect of these
medications was going to be on my baby, and that was really, really
difficult."**
Coming out
After almost two months, once she was no longer contagious, she was released,
and could hug her two-year-old.
**"I was really worried when I came out of the hospital, like, what's he
going to think? Is he going to cry when he sees me? Is he going to recognise
me? And he came right up to me, hugged me — it was really amazing."**
What her story is for
A months-long cough with night sweats and weight loss is textbook
tuberculosis. It went undiagnosed through several doctors because she was
pregnant, and because TB is not what an American clinician expects to find.
Both of those are reasons to ask the question sooner, not later.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Licens: CC0 1.0 (allmän egendom) · Bearbetat efter www.cdc.gov
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