Might I have tuberculosis?

Your symptoms are serious and could be viral- or it could indicate things like lung cancer. Only a doctor could confirm this, including if you have TB. Print out what you have written here and hand it to your doctor. If it is TB, the sooner you get on the drugs the better your chances are of survival.

It only takes a skin testy and an x-ray. You can find out if you have TB with a simple visit to your doctor.

Have the doctors check you for a chronic bacterial lung infection. Bad viral colds and flu do often become a bacterial infection in the lungs and is one of several types of pneumonia. A bad cold is what I thought I had off and on for more than 6 months in 1999 until it was finally diagnosed correctly and the right antibiotics were given. I'd stay home from work while I thought I was contagious then return to work only to be reinfected a couple weeks later by co-workers who did not have the courtesy to stay home while contagious.

Thank you for taking the time to respond. I will persist in asking the medical group here to ascertain the cause of the recurring infections.

Thank you. I just wanted confirmation from others that I am not being overly concerned and it is worth asking for the test - which I will now do.

Thanks for that. It is good to hear from someone who has had a similar experience. I will definitely ask for the check which you recommend.

I advise it. I once worked in a shelter for homeless families. It was associated with a shelter for homeless men, and many of them worked in the same building. As a routine part of a physical examination, i had a TB skin test, which came back positive. I then had a chest x-ray, which showed that i did not have TB. In the event, the likely explanation was that i had been exposed to TB from the homeless men working in the building, but had not contracted the disease. So, i got a positive reading on the skin test, but a clean bill of health from the x-ray. It will be good if you will take these simple steps, and i consider that it is not at all unreasonable for you to do so.

I had almost the exact opposite. An x-ray for possible broken ribs revealed some sort of anomoly in a lobe of on lung. A followup CT scan showed scarring from an old and undiagnosed case of TB. Who knew you could have such a thing and not know about it?

That is odd, Boss.

Trying to remember.. one of our techs (well, she long ago got a doctorate, but this was longer ago, early seventies) had a positive skin test, neg xray, if I remember, and she took a course of (what? I'd recognize the name if I saw it) just to be sure. Early seventies wasn't all that long after my laboratory training, when tb was a huge concern, and I know it still can be, just not front and center like it was then.

edit - of course giving antibiotics as a precaution to people who didn't actually have tb probably was part of increasing resistance, though I'm not sure how that could work. I have no idea about what is happening in the field now, but back then it took six weeks for a culture to show up as positive.

Given that you have all these symptoms of something going on, passing by, I'd be pushing the docs to figure it out.

I was diagnosed with presumed ocular histoplasmosis back in '89. Histoplasmosis is a fungal infection from airborne bird droppings and bats. You can have flu like symptoms and never know you have had it, thinking it was only the flu until it flares up again years later, as mine did.

I was told that I would likely have a false positive for TB, and may have nodules in my lungs that may alarm a doctor later down the road. I was told to mention the hystoplasmosis if this occurred so that another test could be done to rule out TB.

Set and Roger, that may be the case with your TB results and nodule. It's most common in the midwest. Ohio is a hotbed.

My false positive was from a skin test. The x-ray ruled out TB, and was the indicator that i'd been exposed (hence, the positive skin test) but had not contracted the disease (and therefore, a negative from the x-ray).

Wow. Interesting, Roger. I had almost the exact opposite.

My father had TB back in the days when folks were admitted to a TB sanitarium where they could hack all over each other and get well. Our family were all given bi-annual chest x-rays (mine occurred from the time I was 5 until I was 20). We had an arrangement with our family Dr that we wouldn't hear anything unless there was something to hear -- no news is good news. We all had scarring and positive TB tests because we'd lived in close quarters with someone with active TB. We were told that we'd successfully "encapsulated" the bacterium, formed antibodies, had a very slim chance of getting TB, but that there was a chance that the TB could become active, hence the bi-annual x-rays.

One time (I was in 2nd grade) we got a card in the mail to contact the dr regarding my chest x-ray. I absolutely freaked and was convinced that I was going to be marched off to the TB sanitarium. My mother called the dr and was told that my lungs look fine, but that the x-ray had identified a broken rib. I'd been bitching for months that my side hurt after sliding into a desk at school the previous school year.

To passing by... yes, do get yourself checked out. It could be TB, it could be viral, it could be any number of things, but it's worth getting checked and hopefully cured.

Yeah, I understood that. I'm saying it could have been Histo (positive skin, negative x-ray, or in Roger's case a nodule in the lungs appearing on x-ray) since both can be confused without further testing. In the future, you might mention the results and possible exposure to TB, but also mention that Histo wasn't ruled out if further testing to distinguish between TB and histo wasn't done. I'm not saying your docs were wrong. I'm just passing along additional info.

Shortness of breath? Sounds like asthma.

Check-up is the word.