Things I know

I was going to write in here that making your own wood fired pizza oven would improve the quality of your life...and then proceed to tell you why I know this and how you can make one too. But......

It just seemed a little, I don't know......over done.....for me, that is. So if you want to skip this post you can click over to THIS one to see how, and THIS one to see yummy Pizza.


But right now, I have a little, big story to purge from my inner lungs. Literally.


So the thing I know is, that  Doctors miss things. You know this? right.

One fine day, I woke with a cough. A cough that went like this; splutter, sneeze, cough, cough, cough, cough, COUGH, COUGH, COUGH. I here Ya, we all have coughs, but if you can imagine a normal cold kinda cough and multiply that cough by a million, then you would have my cough. On and on this fine cough went, until I was Coughing through the night, coughing through the day, la, la la, la la, almost like a little song. Not a very pretty song though. This cough went on for months and months that merged into a year.....then past a year.

Fast forward that merging monthy year to another fine day, and I am in Africa, on holiday with Wayne and our 8 month old Jonah, and his 2 big sisters. We are staying with Wayne's family. Yay, for family. So here I am COUGH, COUGH, COUGH. YUK, YUK, YUK!....on and on goes the cough.

One morning my Sister in-law INSISTS on taking me to her doctor, (because, no doubt she is sick to death of hearing me cough my lungs out ALL night.) I tell her, I have been to the doctors many times back in Oz, its just asthma, the reactive asthma that started when I was pregnant with our son and just WON'T go away, the asthma that I have been taking all sorts of pumpy stuff for and having sessions of accupunture for and LARGE amounts of herbal stinky balls to try to get rid of this cough. The asthma, that has ever so cunningly, taken over my life. Our life.

And,..... inside me, I am quietly dying. I can feel it. I can not walk from A to B without the wheeze swallowing my lungs. Stealing my breath again and again, like a proficient, familiar thief.

So,.... I go.

Mr Doctor gives my lungs the once over and listens, as they all do, but he also taps my chest here and there.... Then he tells me, I think you have pneumonia, I want to send you for an x-ray. WHAT, X-RAY? , mmmmmm....... never had one of those before.

He looks concerned.

So,.... I go.

The logistics of all this, has my head in a spin. So I give over to every one, and in an hour or so I am standing in a Johannesburg hospital having an X-ray. Feeling, oh, so..... scared.

The lovely lady doing my X-ray behind the screen, looks at her computer then looks at me.....and then actually...GASPS....... loudly ...and says...What happened to you.....? ( are they even aloud to do that????)

UM.... I DONT KNOW, what the frigg has happened to me.... I am speechless. my legs feel are on the weak side...the world is definitely spinning faster on its axis, Just... for... me. Around me there are lots of discussions about this, and that, and they take me in to speak to the x-ray looker overer dude....and he asks me this, and that.... but they give away nothing....Only that it is bad, bad and badder.

So I go back to Mr nice doctor, because he is nice, and I really think he is on to something here. He holds the results and x-rays in his fine doctor hands and flicks through the goodies. Wayne and I are standing together, with separated thoughts, but in silent telepathic union 'what the HELL is going on....'
Nice Dr asks....How long ago did I have TB... WHATY, WHATY, WHAT?........ ALL I can think of is old western movies, with old western cowboys, slowly dying of tuberculosis, in the old western bars, coughing up blood in their hankies, in their old western worlds.

This..... is all I can think of. I don't live in an old western movie. DO I?

I have never had TB. I say. In my barely there voice.

NOT so nice (now) Dr says. I have old TB scarring....... Maybe in a past life I DID live in an old western movie.

He explains that I have a tiny old scar that could be from 5 years ago or 10 years ago. But right now, it looks as if you have full blown active TB, its been going on for a while... MY head goes clickety, click click. You would think I would of been so devastated at this out come, but right then, there is just HUGE definable relief. Finally.... some one has really found out what is wrong with me.

We try to do sputum tests (ewww...)  to confirm the TB, but I can't cough up enough crap to get a proper specimen. So they send me for some back slapping therapy to expel the evil that has entrenched itself within my lungs.

I crawl ever so meekly into a hole, deep within myself as I find out more and more about this disease.

We cannot get a positive diagnosis with out the sputum test, so we are able to fly home the next week. Oh yes,...... they send me home with all that recycled airplane air..... ( I have  a strong suspicion that if they were able to get a positive on the test, we might of been hanging out in africa for quite a while....)

With a severe letter from nice doctor to give to my doctor we arrive home in the week before xmas. I promptly see my doctor, and within an hour  I am seeing a specialist, and with in a couple of hours I have a bag packed to go into Quarantine....I have more x-rays and then CT scans and then some more.

There is questions and not so many answers, either way, I am really starting to know what a leper feels like...

They first tell me that our baby cannot stay with me, and I have to immediately stop breast-feeding to make way for the truck load of medication they have to give me. Well this undone me..... I was finally, devastatingly upset...... Our son was addicted to booby, and he had always had demand feeding. And slept with us. But, well, you know, it got me fired up...So after investigation with the breast-feeding association and Monash University it was found to be ok to continue breast-feeding him and we insisted he stay with me. End of story, on that part, we were having none of their bureaucratic shit, they may have glimpsed the wild look in my eyes....or maybe they thought I had the potential to wipe out populations with my infected breath..not too sure. (Jonah went on to breast feed until he was four. yes, four.)

Sometimes specialists are arseholes who do not give a damn and only look at things one way. This particular one was a shocker.

So, after a oh so lovely positive sputum specimen, 12 different medications arrive, that I am obliged to take, cause otherwise this thing, is going to have its way with me.  Just for an added bonus along with the TB ,  I had Pneumonia (yes, nice Dr. was right), and Pleurisy, and the most devastating was the Bronchiectasis........... which caused my left lung to partially collapse. Of course. Bronchiectasis is un- F@#king fixable... It's there, because the TB went on and on and on and on...etc.

This is me, wayne and Jonah on the hospital lawns. When they finally
let me go for walk into the fresh air, wearing a duck mask. quack, quack.

In my whole pregnancy with Jonah I only put on 3 kgs.


I stayed in hospitable for 3 lonely weeks. Isolated and confined through double doors. Was on medication for 9 months. I passed this infectious disease on to our baby son, to wayne, to Wayne's 12 year old daughter, and to 2 of my best friends......and who knows who else. They all got tested straight away and all had to go on medication for 6 months. Fortunately they only had the infection and the medication was a preventive one, to stop it turning it into the disease. I felt like a piece of shit. I should of complained more to the doctors, or expressed my concern more.
I Just don't know... because,


During my pregnancy I did express my concern of coughing so much that I was worried about the baby inside me, they said it was fine....of course, it was just reactive asthma. The coughing wouldn't bother him. How can a baby rest inside the womb when its whole world is continually disturbed by a hacking movement...???
I went to the doctors many times.....


When my son was 7 months old, about a month before we went to Africa, I went to a doctor again to express my absolute exhaustion at this coughing, to say I needed something done....
He asked.....Are you well with in yourself?
 MY god, nooooooooo, I am exhausted, my mental state is fine....I just need to get rid of this cough!!
( I have seen your wife around town, with 3 tiny kids looking haggard and a little off, but thats not me mate, don't project on to me you bastard...)


He said, I had a bronchial infection and maybe I could go and have a big dose of steroids...... 
Its a good thing I didn't, cause steroids feed the TB Bug and make it grow. BIG. And I was  already having asthma pumps that were doing nothing.


This is when I went to have some accupunture to see if a little pin poking therapy could be the answer.
Yep, Doctors miss stuff.


I will continue this story at some time, cause there is more to tell. But right now, I am exhausted.


Thanks for listening and tell your Dr every detail of what your pain or problem is, even if you think its unrelated or even when they give you that look, and try and dismiss you, chances  are something will add up...... eventually.
Oh, and the big question: How did I get TB and why? I could of picked it up in Nepal when I was 18, or when wayne and I spent 6 months back in zimbabwe. A third of the population carry TB in them but may never get sick from it unless their immune system is compromised. Or in my case until I got pregnant and was run down.

As one Doctor said, some one could of sneezed on me in the supermarket.

6 rows in front and 6 rows behind me on that plane had to be notified and be tested to see if they had contracted TB...... All of the mothers and Babys had to be tested in my mothers group for TB, I never went back.

Fortunally no one was infected, but I still feel like a piece of shit.

Its been 10 years since, I was 28 years old. So as we near xmas this year I am ever grateful for my husband and family and my life since, cause you can come close to the edge sometimes. so close.