Seonai Gordon Former Herald librarian and TB campaigner; Born November 23, 1961; Died June 23, 2009. Seonai Gordon, who has died aged 47, was a former Herald employee and TB activist who wrote extensively about her own battle with the disease. Edinburgh-born Gordon died at a hospice in Brighton after contracting the illness for a second time. She first suffered from TB in the late 1990s while living in Glasgow. She had recently returned to Scotland from Thailand at the time and was working in the library department of The Herald. She made a full recovery after treatment. She later moved back to Thailand and it was there that she contracted TB for a second time. When her condition deteriorated, she returned to the UK in 2006 for treatment. Sadly, this time she never fully recovered. advertisement It was a persistent cough and shooting chest pains which first prompted Gordon to visit her Glasgow GP in 1999. Shocked to discover that she was suffering from tuberculosis, she was admitted to a hospital isolation ward in the city. However, after two weeks of intensive treatment and a period of convalescence, she made a complete recovery. She was never sure whether she caught the disease in Scotland or in Asia, where she had been working as a journalist on the Thailand Times. Following her recovery, Gordon first moved to the south of England, working in the library of The Independent newspaper, before eventually returning to live and work in Thailand with her young son, Ziyo. A former nurse, her love of Thailand started in the early 1990s when she went there to study Buddhism. She often described the country as her "true home". She spoke fluent Thai and was married twice, both times to Thai men. When she and her son returned to live there, Gordon embarked upon a successful career in journalism, contributing articles to a variety of travel magazines from her home on the island of Koh Yao Noi. Then, in 2005, her cough returned. Doctors dismissed it as nothing more than hay fever. However, as her condition deteriorated, she was moved to a hospital in Bangkok where, more than a year after her symptoms emerged, it was finally confirmed that she had again contracted TB. After two months in hospital - and with few signs of improvement - concerned friends arranged for her to be flown back to the UK. Gordon arrived back in Brighton in June, 2006. She fought the disease bravely for the next year and was eventually left with only about 50% lung capacity. Had her second illness been diagnosed at an earlier stage, she could have been treated with greater success and her death could have been avoided. Though seriously debilitated by her condition, Gordon devoted her time to campaigning to raise awareness of TB. She became involved with the Brighton-based charity, TB Alert, and had her own blog, chronicling her battle with the disease. She also wrote a series of articles for the British Tuberculosis Survival Project. As a result of the TB, Gordon was left with a condition called bronchiectasis, an abnormal widening of the lungs. The condition is incurable and her condition deteriorated in recent months. She died in a hospice in Hove. She is survived by her son Ziyo, 14, her mother Sheila and her brother Callum. # By Allan Laing