Meghalaya: TB champion surviving with single lung creates awareness to fight tuberculosis

East Khasi Hills (Meghalaya) [India], March 23 (ANI): Ridalin Shullai, a 33-year-old TB survivor from East Khasi Hills, has opened up about her personal battle with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), revealing the emotional and physical toll it took on her life.
Speaking with ANI, Ridalin shared, "I was diagnosed with Multi resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), the side effects are there, the long term side effects. So for me, after treatment, I had to get scans again just to check, like my assessments and everything and when the results came out that one of my left lung, completely collapsed due to the severity of the disease."
"So, now I'm surviving with only one lung, only one," she said.
She also spoke about the severities of the illness including loss of appetite, and low hemoglobin including others," It took me about after the treatment months to start walking again. It's like taking baby steps again."
Ridalin delayed her treatment for two months because of the fear that she would die. She lost her father and a friend due to the severity of the TB disease. So she decided firstly to avoid symptoms and later to undergo Homeopathy treatment.
She explains, "I've seen that in my dad's situation, and at the back of my head, I already knew that this is TB, you But then, because, for the people that I've seen who got TB, they didn't make it through. So I've seen my friend, she died from TB, and then my father died from TB. So at that point of time when I got the symptoms I already knew that it was TB, but then in fear of death, you know this, for them, the result is always dead. So I was afraid of death. So, I was like, Okay, I'm just gonna take the homeopathy and believe that is just seasonal flu, which is not actually a flu."
Later she stressed on challenges while counselling about the treatment and social stigma that TB patients have to face.
"The side effects of the medicines itself, they have like a person have anger issues, irritated, annoyed, and all of that nausea and all of that so, and it really plays psychologically," she said.
She explained about a case where due to lack of counselling patient committed suicide because of the social stigma, "I had one case where I was, I did help with the counselling, and also, like, even bring her here, elsewhere. But then, due to the stigma, which is so bad around her, that she took a treatment only for about two months, and then she stopped. She's a college student at a time, so nobody would interact with her. They know some of her classmates, they know that she got TB and all so they try to avoid from her. And then even when she walk on the street, also when her friend is like, coming the same way they were like, literally, after seeing her, they should be walking the other way around.
"I remember when she called me, she would be like, I can't do this anymore because of the medicines and all. I think lack of counseling also, like, there were no counselors, so she never got counseling, like checking on her most of the time. It's the least that I can do.I think it was the medicines are so strong that she couldn't cope up with it. And then that's how, you know, like, TB took her life that way. So she ended up Suicide." She said
Ridalin got detected TB in 2015 and underwent for the treatment for 2 years, since then she is counselling people and creating awareness.She is a Tb Survivor from East Khasi Hills District Meghalaya , a steering committee member of Younite India a d a fellow at fellow survivor against TB. (ANI)