'I couldn't stand up for long, and often thought I was going to collapse at work,' said Helen Brown
Her GP kept saying she just had a chest infection, but after three visits to the surgery in a fortnight, Helen Brown wasn’t getting any better and she knew it was something more serious.
But nothing could have prepared her for the diagnosis she was given a few weeks later: she had tuberculosis, or TB.
‘I’d told my parents I didn’t feel right and I knew it wasn’t just a chest infection,’ recalls Helen, 23, from Glossop in Derbyshire.
‘We were all really worried. I’d wake in the night and my sheets would be soaking.
'I had a hacking cough, which was so loud it was like a dog barking — it was embarrassing.
'I also felt sick a lot of the time, so skipped meals.’
Helen’s symptoms were initially rather vague.
In June 2011, she started feeling inexplicably weak, and had to keep taking weeks off from her job as a cinema box office assistant.
‘I couldn’t stand up for long, and often thought I was going to collapse at work.’
Over the following weeks, she also began to feel constantly tired, nauseous and generally run down.
She blamed it on her hectic social life and working hard, but then she started suffering from night sweats three or four times a week, and in July developed a persistent cough. She also lost half a stone.
Finally, in September, the problem was diagnosed after a different GP referred her for an X-ray. Helen had pulmonary TB — the most common form of the disease.
TB is a disease caused by bacteria from the Mycobacterium tuberculosis family.
Only the pulmonary (lung) form of the disease is infectious, usually following prolonged close contact with an infected person. It is caught by inhaling the bacteria contained in droplets from a sneeze or cough.
It’s a disease most people assume has been eradicated in the UK since the discovery of the Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine in 1921.
However, around 9,000 cases are reported every year, according to Public Heath England.
Over the years, TB rates in the UK had been rising, and while they have remained relatively stable since 2005, we still have the highest rate in Western Europe.
The disease is more prevalent in large urban areas — and London tops the list.
‘I’ve still no idea how I caught it,’ says Helen. ‘The doctors don’t know either. They told me it’s extremely rare to catch it from a chance encounter.’
A risk with TB is that the disease is often diagnosed late, which means there’s a greater risk of transmission to other people.
This occurs because TB is a ‘great mimicker’ and even experienced doctors can miss it, says Melanie Newport, professor in infectious diseases and global health at Brighton and Sussex Medical School.
'I've still no idea how I caught it (TB). The doctors don't know either. They told me it's extremely rare to catch it from a chance encounter,' said Helen
‘Symptoms such as fever, night sweats and weight loss can often be mistaken for conditions such as cancer or HIV, and coughing up blood — a classic symptom of TB — can also be a sign of lung cancer or pneumonia,’ says Professor Newport, who is also a trustee of the charity Target TB.
Indeed, the GP Helen first saw was convinced it was just a chest infection and had prescribed three different types of antibiotics — but none worked. The GP also gave her a blood test for anaemia, which was negative.
‘The last time I saw her, my GP just said: “Well, what do you want me to do?”
‘I was getting frustrated because I knew I didn’t feel right but she kept saying nothing was wrong.
'I’d started getting lower back pain, too, and I knew it was more than a chest infection.’
Helen asked to see a different GP, who referred her to Tameside Hospital in Ashton-under-Lyne for a chest X-ray, saying it was routine procedure with a persistent cough.
The GP called Helen the next day and said she suspected TB.
‘I thought she was joking — I couldn’t believe it. I thought no one got TB in Britain any more as there was a vaccine for it.’ (In fact, it had never been completely eradicated in the UK.)
Helen was told to go straight home from work as she was contagious — and had been since her cough started.
She had to send sputum samples (mucus she’d coughed up) to her GP, who then sent them on to the hospital for analysis.
Helen was also prescribed a six-month course of strong antibiotics.
‘I was put on six months’ sick leave,’ says Helen. ‘At first my boss didn’t believe me, saying they must have got the diagnosis mixed up with an old person’s as he thought it was a disease of the past, too.
‘They scrubbed the cinema top to bottom, which made me feel embarrassed.’
Over the years, TB rates in the UK had been rising, and while they have remained relatively stable since 2005, we still have the highest rate in Western Europe
Helen was told to stay indoors for a week until the contagious stage had passed.
Because one of the four antibiotics Helen was on — isoniazid — can cause liver failure, she needed weekly blood tests for three months, and then every month to check her liver function.
Meanwhile, Helen continued to feel extremely unwell for many months.
‘I felt so ill and weak because of the TB and the medication. I couldn’t even get up to make a cup of tea,’ says Helen.
‘My dad had to carry me up the stairs to bed. I couldn’t eat anything and went from 8 stone to 6 stone.’
She also had regular chest X-rays to ensure her lungs were clear of TB. The final X-ray, six months after starting the drugs, was clear.
Helen was assigned a team of TB nurses who tried to work out how she’d contracted the disease.
‘They asked me things like had I been abroad or in jail, as apparently it’s rife in prison because of overcrowding and drug use.
'I told them I’d had my BCG vaccine at school at age 12, but they said it only lasts for ten years.’
In fact, the vaccination for children aged ten to 14 has not been offered since 2005 as public health officials decided it had little impact on the disease. It’s known not to work well in people over 16, but certain groups are recommended to have it.
People in high-risk jobs, such as laboratory staff, and those travelling to areas such as sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia, where incidence of the disease is high, are advised to have it.
1 in 8
The proportion of deaths in the UK caused by TB 150 years ago
But without an obvious cause of transmission, it was only Helen’s symptoms that could alert doctors to the fact she had TB.
As Christopher Payne, her chest physician at Tameside Hospital, explains: ‘I consider TB in any patient with persistent chest symptoms, weight loss or fever.
'The longer the delay in diagnosis, the greater the risk of transmission to other people.’
Helen’s mother and father, her then boyfriend, and elder sister Laura all had to have chest X-rays to make sure they hadn’t caught TB, too.
They were all clear except Laura, 25. She’d been feeling tired and had been diagnosed as anaemic a few months earlier.
Fortunately, she’d only picked up the ‘latent’ form of TB from Helen, which is not contagious, but she was put on milder medication for six months to make sure she didn’t develop full-blown TB.
It’s taken Helen two years to make a full recovery.
‘For a long time I was left pretty weak and couldn’t walk for long distances — I kept having to sit down and rest.’
Her weight is also back to normal now.
The TB has left scars on her lungs, but the doctors have said this won’t affect her general health. However, if she catches a cold she’s more likely to develop a chest infection.
Helen is now a part-time sales assistant in a pet superstore, and also works as a dog groomer.
‘I was worried I’d pass it on to the dogs but I’ve been told that’s not possible,’ she says.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2528617/TB-Why-Helen-proves-no-one-safe-alarming-return-TB.html#ixzz2ocodxtW9
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