(Part 1 in a series)
As a teenager, I can vividly remember the sound of my Grandfather’s coughing waking me out of a fitful night’s rest.
Weeks later, my parents came home from the hospital with the news Grandpa had been diagnosed with tuberculosis or “TB,” and that the whole family needed to be tested.
Being an avid reader, I knew snippets about TB. I knew it was also called “consumption” a synonym that meant a wasting away as it “consumed” your body.
And I knew it could mean death.
But even more frightening than death to me were the stories about TB patients being sent away to these large, imposing structures called sanitoriums that held an eerie resemblance to institutions or prisons.
Behind a facade of architecturally appealing landscapes, people suffered with a debiliating disease that devoured not only their physical bodies, but often their minds.
From my reading, I understood that some people went away to these places to “recover,” yet most never returned home.
In my heart, I greatly feared Grandpa would be sent away too.
Low and whispered conversations punctuated my parent’s conversations. I watched their faces for clues as to what they were thinking. My father’s face was stoic and unsmiling; my mother’s face often creased with worry. I heard her tell my father that as the primary caretaker for my Grandpa, she was certain she could be at risk.
Then, the test results came back. All the results were negative…except one.
Only it wasn’t Mama’s.
I don’t know exactly how I knew my test would be positive, but I did.
I remembered waking to the sounds of Grandpa’s persistent coughing in the middle of that fateful night. Having found him with his face buried in the bed covers and unable to catch his breath, I had leaned over within just a few inches from his face.
“Are you okay, Grandpa?” I asked him. “What can I do for you?”
He sputtered, “I’m pretty sick,” through intermittent coughing spells and gasps for air.
Everything made sense now. The symptoms I had experienced as a young 17-year-old that included fatigue, persistent headaches, and night sweats. These symptoms could no longer be ignored or explained away. Oddly, I never experienced any coughing. Which made it even more difficult for the next step.
I was given specimen bottles to “spit up” in, designed to test my sputum for the disease and to confirm the results of the other tests. I found it gross, disgusting, and embarrassing. As much as I tried, nothing would come up.
There is an aloneness that is difficult to describe when you are going through an illness that you’re not absolutely certain you’re going to survive.
The blessing in disguise in this situation was that my relationship with God deepened, in ways I can only appreciate now. Instead of trusting in my own strength, I sought the great Physician.
“I sought the Lord, and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears.” (Psalm 34:4, NIV)
God intervened and sent to me, and Grandpa, a health department nurse named Pat. She was a beautiful blonde with a kind smile. She tried to reassure both Grandpa and me that we were going to get well.
Nothing she said registered with me, however, until she shared one specific detail.
Pat told us that she had only one lung as a result of having battled TB.
It was then that I realized she was not only a TB survivor, but a woman with one healthy lung, willing to risk her life to help me.
Me! Someone she didn’t even really know.
She was this beacon God had sent as confirmation that this battle with TB could be successfully fought and won.
Pat would visit us often. Under her watchful care, I began to share my innermost fears with her. She convinced me that not only was a sanitorium unlikely in Grandpa’s future, it wasn’t in mine either.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Grandpa just sighed.
Pat advised me to turn the water in the shower as hot as I could tolerate and then to breathe in the moist air to help me provide the sputum samples. And it worked! Such a small thing, but it meant the world to me.
She provided instruction on our drug regimen and emphasized the importance of never skipping a dose. Noncompliance was not an option.
Grandpa, who was in his early 80s, balked on taking the medication only once; he was having serious side effects. Although not unsympathetic, Pat was adament that he had no choice but to continue on the drugs.
I hated taking the drugs too. I don’t remember the exact number I had to take daily, but I do remember some were very large and hard to swallow. I took them faithfully without fail for approximately one year.
But I was soon to discover taking the drugs would be one of the least difficult aspects of this disease, as challenges I could not have imagined lie ahead…