It was during the summer of June 2015 when I started to get a recurring cough. I felt weak, lost my appetite, and got night sweats. At first I thought it was just a seasonal viral flu. After a month of treatment under a homeopath and a herbalist for bronchitis and asthma, my condition seemed to get only worse. I could not sit or sleep properly; the cough would last about an hour or more, especially before I fell asleep. I became very thin and my skin started to peel off from all over my body. I would sweat heavily, and my hair was falling off. Despite the symptoms, I was very scared of going to the hospital because I kept remembering how my father had died from extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB) in 2013.
Eventually, my mother decided to get me tested. They came to collect my blood and sputum samples, and also to check my blood pressure and sugar. It was when my mother received the report that we came to know that I had Modified CAT IV (multidrug-resistant TB, or MDR TB). I was admitted to Reid Provincial Chest Hospital in Shillong on September 14, 2015. This news took a toll on my family.
During this initial phase, I still remember taking off my clothes and staring at myself in the mirror. I could not recognise the person staring back at me. This woman was just skin and bones, pale from head to toe, with nerves popping from her neck, hands and feet. I was totally broken – mentally, physically and emotionally. I was supposed to be part of a seven-day trial treatment to check the reactions of the injection that I was to be prescribed, but while everyone else who was admitted along with me got to go home on the seventh day (which also happened to be my birthday), I was shifted to an isolation ward as my condition was getting worse. My left lung completely collapsed, and now I have only one functioning lung. My doctor informed my family that I might live only for about two months from the day of admission. However, they kept their belief strong and decided to hide this fact from me until November 2016.
