"Hindsight is 20/20." Millions of people understand the reality of that saying as they learn they've lived with valley fever for weeks, months or even years before proper diagnosis.
More are learning to live with it every day, because valley fever is at epidemic levels across the southwestern United States.
Learn more about how this disease is spread and why you should know about it - even if you don't live in the Southwest.
One woman's hindsight hit her in February 2007, as a result of two respiratory infections she caught between November 2006 and January 2007. By February, the coughing, fatigue and joint pain were unbearable. Several visits to the family doctor with blood tests, chest X-rays and CT scans later, the cause revealed itself: valley fever. A nodule discovered in one lung, due to pneumonia caused by valley fever, had to be monitored on a two-year schedule of CT scans, at two- and six-month intervals.
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