It is ridiculous that I could go so long without knowing I had TB.
Since you were living in the Philippines last year, and you have children who are half-Filipino........ridiculous indeed.
Dude, I've apparently had Tuberculosis for several years. I've been living in the Philippines continuously since 2005, and greater than 50% of time from 1991 to 2004.
What is ridiculous is how fucking stupid the doctors are here.
Additionally my doctor in 2012 for my acute peptic ulcer had prescribed ofloxacin without first testing me for TB, thus if I already had TB then (which is very likely as I think it caused my ulcer) then he made my TB resistant to the only second line drug treatment for multi-drug resistant TB.
A competent doctor should not prescribe the main second line drug for curing TB to someone in a country with 70 - 80% incidence of latent TB where up to 1% of the active cases are resistant to all 4 of the first line drugs!!
If I have a strain of TB resistant to the main 4 drugs, then if that idiot doctor made my TB resistant also to ofloxacin, then basically there are no drug remaining to cure the TB!!
He was treating me for h.pylori and I had a very toxic olfactory reaction to clarithromycin so he decided to prescribe me ofloxacin, but he should know that he must test for TB before giving me ofloxacin, because it can make my TB resistant to ofloxacin, thus meaning I could become incurable. When taking ofloxacin for curing TB, you take much higher doses and for much longer prior of time, than for treating h.pylori.
That is insane. If he had tested me for TB, I wouldn't have been sick for 4 fucking years, which caused me to go bankrupt.
That is fucking ridiculous. In a foreign country, you would sue the doctor for malpractice.