Isn't it disturbing when you see your friends whom you went to University with finally getting their life together? I'm sitting here and not even close to what they've achieved so far.

 

Wouldn't it even be nice if when one is diagnosed with DR-TB, you take treatment as if you've caught flu, and u'll be alright in 5 days?

 

Now, in our day, catching DR-TB means your life will be on hold for 2 or more years, perhaps for life too, with some of the side effects being so cruel. Somewhere someone became blind due to toxic treatment. I became deaf due to toxic treatment. Is that how it's suppose to be? I think not.

 

Just a year ago me and fellow patients and doctors around the world wrote the DR-TB manifesto. The demands there are quite clear. All that's needed to be done now is getting more people sign the manifesto.

 

Let me mention a few demands. Every DR patient complains about the drugs; having to drink 20+ a day for 2 years everyday. There's the injection you get for 6 months everyday. Side effects you go through: hallucinations - seeing and hearing things that are not there - psychosis, skin problems, going through surgery because you have developed pneumothorax..the list goes on.

 

Getting more people to sign the manifesto means there will be less pain for people who have DR-TB. I mean life being normal for sometime and suddenly you get DR TB and then you are forced to accept things that cannot be changed. It's not suppose to be like that.

 

Signing the manifesto will be 1 step forward, as no one chooses to have XDR-TB. It can get anyone else at anytime. Signing the manifesto might make a world a better place too :)