An Interview With 'Teresita'

What was your first symptom of Hansen's disease?

When I was first pregnant the first time, I had cysts under my breasts. There was a doctor that came to my village who came and checked me and said that it looked like shingles. Then, it went away. So after the baby was forty days old, I started having skin problems on my arm that looked like an allergy. It started spreading up my arm and into my torso with blotches of red and white. Then I had fever and chills… really bad headaches, really bad fever. I was even having hallucinations.

How did people treat you? Your family?

At first, people said that someone must have cast a spell on me, witchcraft on me. So at first they were taking me to the witch doctor and other doctors and they told me that it was either a sickness sent from God or spell that somebody cast on me. Then they took me to the witchdoctor and he instructed me to bathe my legs and vapor of hot milk. I burned my foot really badly, but I didn't know it because I didn't have any feeling in that foot.

I had my feet in there for a couple of minutes and then I went and I was sitting on some steps and I sat down on the steps to dry my feet and I felt something soft and strange on my foot and I looked down and it was all blistered. But it didn't hurt because I couldn't feel it. So after that we needed to go out and do our laundry because we didn't have water in our house and since I didn't feel any pain, I went out (this was during the rainy season) and we had to go barefoot to do our laundry because the rain would make the ground slippery. We had to carry the washbasins with all the clothes on our heads, so I went out barefoot and I ended up getting two ulcers on my feet because I didn't realize I was damaging them more.

For years, I had tried many treatments and I didn't know what was wrong with me and wasn't getting better and I had lost my will to live. Two times I tried to kill myself but then I regretted it because I had a small baby, I thought of my baby. But thank goodness I finally ended up here at Damien House where Sister Annie was like a second mother to me. Here, I began to feel more like myself and my heart grew happy again. I didn't want to stay at Damien House because I had my little baby that I was still nursing and so I would receive my medicine here and go back home. I would come to Damien House alone because my husband and I didn't have the money for both of us to travel here.

How did you find out you had Hansen's?

A cousin recommended that I visit another larger town to be seen by a doctor and the doctor there had the name of Damien House and referred me here. At the point when I arrived here I was skin and bones and because of the fever I was a walking skeleton. The doctor here diagnosed me and started the treatment, I was an outpatient here and I gradually began improving. But at the same time I was getting better from the leprosy I was losing sensation in my hands, legs and feet. I could not do things with my hands, I couldn't lift things. I could hardly comb my hair. I was having treatment for three or four years, and by then my baby was three years old and I couldn't care for him. But then I had the surgery, and I recovered the feeling in my hands and I can do practically anything I could do before.

How did your family take the news that you had Hansen's?

I was lucky because we were living with my in-laws and they never were repulsed by me.

How did you learn of the surgery for Hansen's?

At first, the doctor here told me that he was going to recommend that I see a doctor from the United States because I was having a lot of pain in my legs. They told me the doctors from the states would be coming, and I would need to see the doctors a couple of months ahead of time to see if I was a candidate [for the surgery]. The doctors told me I needed surgery in both my hands and feet. I was overwhelmed. I went out into the street and started to cry. Then Sister Annie came out and I told her I was afraid to have all of my hands and feet operated on at the same time because I wouldn't be able to take care of my baby, and I was afraid if I had the operation I would become an invalid. Sister Annie said “don't cry, it won't be like that. They won't do all of the surgeries at the same time and you'll still be able to take care of the baby.” Finally, she convinced me to have the surgery, but I imagined myself on crutches and not able to do anything so I was still afraid.

Were you glad you had the surgery?

After my first surgery, I had to stay here a while without my family so I was very homesick and so I was here and the patients of Damien house started to come talk to me and told me “look at our hands,” and many of them had crippled hands or hands that were amputated. They said “we did not have the chance to have the surgery and you are lucky to have this opportunity to return to a normal life.”

I was pretty much the youngest of all the patients here. And since I was young I should take this chance to have a good result [from the surgery]. I was in the first group of patients to have this surgery here, so there was more sense of taking a risk and the other patients were telling me "you should try because you are so young and you have your whole life ahead of you." I had the operation on my right leg and left arm.

One of the first signs I had of success was [before the surgery,] I could not grow a toenail on my first two toes and right away, my toenails started growing back. They had tried to grow before and they were all watery but now they were growing back right away. When I got home, I wanted to do a little test and I took my shoes off and wanted to feel the gravel on the bottom of my feet and yes, I did feel it.

How has your life changed since coming to Damien House?

It's helped me a lot because here I feel that I have another family, another support structure that I can go to. I really hope that the work here and the education can prevent some from having as difficult of a journey as some of the people here have had and more people can understand that this disease is not very contagious. I just hope that other people don't have to go through what we went through.