<\/p>\n
I wouldn\u2019t dare interrupt the treatment for anything in the world.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n At 31 years of age, Sara, a woman from a mountain village, learned the lesson of being optimistic. She says she \u201cgladly\u201d takes the eight medicines a day and she wants, at any cost, to \u201cstop\u201d the disease. She cannot afford to abandon the fight, her children come first. Moreover, she is convinced that she will get well because, as we know, treatments now aren\u2019t those of 20 years ago.<\/p>\n She thought she had anaemia<\/strong><\/p>\n It was a day at the beginning of summer, and Sara was doing her household work, as she always did after her husband left for work down to the village. That day she felt a little weak and some sort of undefined dizziness was not letting her be her usual self. She thought she was anaemic and she decided to do a set of tests at the county hospital. And, since she was going to the city anyway, she would do a check-up on her lungs as well. Fatigue and dizziness could also have come from the beginning of a cold. \u201cI did the blood tests, they came out well, no unusual problems. Only that the lung film confirmed I had a stronger cold. They said I was suspected of TB and they decided to send me to the Leordeni Hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n Sara knew nothing about tuberculosis. Absolutely nothing. She didn\u2019t know anybody who could have had this disease and when the doctor told her you pick it up from the air and told her a little more about TB, she was surprised. \u201cI was shocked by what I was told, because I hadn\u2019t expected it. I hadn\u2019t led a careless life.\u201d<\/p>\n She armed herself with patience<\/strong><\/p>\n As she herself says, she tried not to panic and, being \u201caware of the disease that was to take hold\u201d of her, she complied with the doctors\u2019 recommendations and she went herself to the hospital, in order to be admitted. She is a delicate person, with dark and sad eyes, who often repeats that she has to go on, and she has arguments. \u201cI try not to panic, if we think that, anyway, this is a disease that is treatable, only that it needs more hospitalisation time and we must have patience. A lot of patience,\u201d as Sara learned in the seven weeks that she has spent in hospital so far. She is calm, perhaps also because her body accepts the medicines well, she doesn\u2019t feel sick. She takes eight medicines each day and she says that she takes the treatment \u201cgladly\u201d, that she doesn\u2019t have any problem with it. She hopes to spend only two months in hospital and then only follow outpatient treatment, probably for another six months, from what the doctor told her.<\/p>\n Now, Sara knows what tuberculosis is. Not only from what the doctor who treats her now has told her. She researched on her own to find out more, because \u201cthere are also all these internet sites you can access. But, well, we don\u2019t rely on them 100%.\u201d Now she realises that TB is a quite serious, but curable disease. \u201cWhat can I say? I\u2019ve gotten used to the thought and I came here to get well and go on with my life. Because I believe I will be cured,\u201d Sara says. Sara wears a surgical mask as we talk \u2013 she has not become negative yet and she is contagious. She still undergoes investigations, until exactly those medicines that are the most efficient in her case will be determined. No matter what, she is decided to go through with the treatment. From what she has read, from her talks with the doctor and from what she has seen in the hospital, she knows very well that she must cling to the treatment, otherwise the disease will relapse and will be harder to treat. \u201cPerhaps it won\u2019t be like this. You know, it also depends on us,\u201d she understood. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t dare interrupt the treatment for anything in the world, no matter how hard it might get. I go through with it to the end.\u201d<\/p>\n This disease \u201cjust hits you like that\u2026 it takes you by surprise\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Does she has a family? \u201cOf course. I have a family, I have a husband, I have kids.\u201d Two little girls who live with her and a boy of 14 who lives with her ex-husband. Faith and the thought of her children and her husband give her strength. Then there is her mother, her brothers-in law, everybody tells her she will be fine, all are there for her and Sara feels lucky because, she says, \u201cthe mental part is very important. There are moments when we are down, we cry, but that\u2019s how it is. We pick ourselves up and we go on.\u201d She always talks in the plural, about \u201cwe, the patients,\u201d \u201cwe have a diagnostic,\u201d \u201cwe should go on.\u201d She doesn\u2019t want to think of herself alone in front of this challenge, and she is not alone. So far, she has not talked to a psychologist and she hopes she won\u2019t get to the point when she will need to. She constantly talks with her husband, they support each other and she is very happy that everybody in the family had good test results, nobody else has TB.<\/p>\n She doesn\u2019t even know how she came to get this tuberculosis, who she got it from. \u201cYou see how this disease is, it just hits you like that\u2026 it takes you by surprise.\u201d And so her life will change. Sara understands this very well and she also knows that she has to comply with certain conditions in order to maintain her health. \u201cI am aware that my life will change. We go on with our lives, with whatever God gives us, there is nothing we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n She knows she will be cured because medicine \u201cis no longer what it was 20 years ago\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n She dreams of the day she will return to her normal life, when she will again work around the house, stumbling on her little girl of one year and a half who has learned to walk and will constantly move around her feet. She sees herself cooking meals for her husband when he comes home from work. No, she would prefer not to have a job again. She is rather tempted to stay home, raise her little girls and see about the house. \u201cNow I am a housewife, but I did once worked in a pastry shop. If I did work again, I would choose this field again. I presume that some job can be found out there for us too, the people with certain problems, even if we are sick \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Still, she doesn\u2019t believe she could get back to this occupation, due to the flour powder and the steam which, she thinks, would damage the lungs. \u201cTo be sincere, I\u2019d rather stay home, if I couldn\u2019t work in a pastry shop. You know, I would somehow want to think of my life as well, not to get to a point where I could do even more harm to myself.\u201d There is no question about other plans because \u201cfirst of all we must be able to raise our children\u201d and then, there is plenty to do at home too.<\/p>\n She is calm because she understands that medicine has evolved and the treatment is much more efficient now than it used to be. \u201cIt\u2019s not like 20 years ago or\u2026 I don\u2019t know how many years ago since this disease exists.\u201d And she also understood something else: \u201cIt also depends on the person. If we are a little more optimistic, the treatment too, I suppose, works a little better. I try to think that at home there are two girls who wait for me and I will fight for them. When she is sad and she feels overwhelmed, she picks up the phone and calls her mother or calls home. \u201cDon\u2019t worry, mom, you\u2019ll get better and you\u2019ll come home,\u201d this is what her girls tell her when they talk on the phone to Sara. They can\u2019t visit her. Sara is afraid that her little ones might get sick. Only her husband comes, when he has time. They don\u2019t have a stable income. Her husband does daily labour, \u201cwherever he can find something,\u201d but they are not afraid of the future. With God\u2019s help, Sara says, they will manage.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want this disease to stand in my way\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n She keeps strong, she always encourages herself, she tells herself \u201cwe must be optimistic,\u201d but she admits that sometimes she cries, sometimes she has negative thoughts. \u201cYou think what a pity it is that at this age this somehow cruel disease comes up. But, in the end, everything is written by God and, if this is how it was meant to be, it\u2019s nobody\u2019s fault that I or someone else got sick.\u201d<\/p>\n In the beginning, until she found out \u201cwhat everything is all about with this disease and until I knew what stage I was in, how it gets into your body and what it can do to you if you let go of yourself, I can say that every day I was feeling like\u2026\u201d Then, when she found what the disease was in fact and that it could be treated, she calmed down and she told herself that, as long as she followed the treatment, ate well and rested as much her body needed, there was no reason why she wouldn\u2019t be cured. \u201cI don\u2019t want this disease to stand in my way, I want to stop it and I want it to end here. Even if this doesn\u2019t happen right now, but in a week, a month, it must stop growing. I believe that life goes on.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I wouldn\u2019t dare interrupt the treatment for anything in the world. At 31 years of age, Sara, a woman from a mountain village, learned the lesson of being optimistic. She says she \u201cgladly\u201d takes the eight medicines a day and she wants, at any cost, to \u201cstop\u201d the disease. She cannot afford to abandon the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-testimoniale"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/control-tb.raa.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/control-tb.raa.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/control-tb.raa.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/control-tb.raa.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/control-tb.raa.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/control-tb.raa.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231,"href":"https:\/\/control-tb.raa.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions\/231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/control-tb.raa.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/control-tb.raa.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/control-tb.raa.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}