Fungal Disease Personal Stories

Dawn’s illness started with a terrible cough. Soon, she couldn’t sleep because she often coughed up blood at night. “I got very sick. I started to lose my voice and was coughing a lot. I went to an [ear, nose, and throat] specialist, and they told me it was laryngitis,” said Dawn.

“I wanted to know what was making me so sick. After feeling this way for such a long time, I knew something was wrong,” said Laura.

“My condition was getting worse and worse every day. It spread from my ankles to my knees, which started to swell. My joints started to feel like stones,” Sabine said.

“I like being outside a lot. Now being on the oxygen tank, I can’t do the things I want to do outside like hunting. Standing out in the woods [is much harder when] dragging the oxygen around. It’s stopped me from doing a lot of things I enjoy,” said Ken.

Mauricio, a doctor at a Colombian hospital, figured he just had a cold. But two days later, he was worse, with chills, a headache, a cough, and swollen lymph nodes in his neck. Within a week, he started feeling better, but soon his mysterious illness took an unusual turn: Mauricio suddenly lost sight in his right eye.

“I had no idea I’d still be recovering from this. I thought it’d just be like normal pneumonia where I take antibiotics for a couple of weeks and I’d be better by now, but it’s been several months, and I’m still recovering,” Heidi said.

“It was debilitating in the early stages. I remember I could not climb the stairs to my office. Clearly, it had a huge impact on my life,” said Kevin.

“The pain was so bad that I couldn’t even open my eyes.  Nobody should have to go through this,” said Stephen.

For three weeks, Terri thought she had the flu, with symptoms including a cough that just wouldn’t go away. “I thought I was dying. . . I lost a lot of weight. My family was very concerned,” Terri said.