During my undergraduate years, I was diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB). Not really something you are prepared for at that age let alone something I had only ever associated with history books and foreign countries. Suddenly, it became deeply personal. Even how I found out was shocking. I wanted to volunteer in an emergency room and when you work in a hospital or health care facility you must be tested for TB (amongst other highly contagious diseases). Of course, my first TB test came back slightly positive, but it could have just been a reaction. The second one a few weeks later was glaringly positive. What followed was a long stretch of medication, routine check-ins, and learning how to manage both the physical side effects and the emotional weight of the diagnosis. The treatment was not quick or easy; it required consistency, patience, and trust in a process that often felt slow and uncertain.
What surprised me most was not just the illness itself, but how isolating the diagnosis along felt. I had no symptoms and yet here I was having to get chest X-rays for the rest of my life and when asked in a health care venue if I have ever tested positive for TB I would have to say yes. It was like I had a Scarlet “TB” on my chest (for those who recognize it, you will know the reference and the irony that this post is also about a book). The social repercussions were just the beginning of this. Balancing coursework, social life, and health created a new kind of awareness for me at a relatively young age. I had to consider my body, my limits, and the importance of persistence as it came to health. Progress did not come all at once; it came in small, steady steps, much like many challenges in both life and learning.
I am proud of this month’s book recommendation in Everything Is Tuberculosis. It not only gave language to an experience I had struggled to articulate, but also the human stories throughout history that have highlighted some of the issues in the modern day that I dealt with. The inequities, the stigma, and the quiet resilience required to overcome are just some of the many ways that this disease has impacted lives throughout history. It reminded me that TB is not just a disease; it is a deeply human experience shaped by circumstance, access, and time. A disease is not defined solely by the physical symptoms that permeate a body; it also defines a generation and the resilience of those that are impacted by it.
Looking back, that chapter of my life may not have been one of the hardest, but it did give me a realization into the health care field for me to later reference. If anything, it makes life relatable especially for someone like me who likes to say, “Where does your journey stem from?” Well, my TB journey stemmed from an unknown contagious interaction, most likely in an undergraduate dormitory. Yet the journey did teach me a few things about myself and how progress is defined by a series of small steps in the direction to overcome.
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