Exclusive: TB Patient Asks Forgiveness but Defends Travel

Speaker said after the CDC called him in Rome and told him to cancel his commercial fight plans, it didn't offer him any help. Speaker says it would have cost $100,000 to fly back on a noncommercial airline. In effect, he said, the CDC was walking away from him and his chance for treatment at the TB facility in Denver.

"Before I left, it was made clear to me in order to fight this I had one shot and that was here," he said about his chances for survival. "I had one shot at this and if I didn't get right treatment, CDC sends testing out here, so they can pick the right drugs to mix, and if I was somewhere where they got it wrong, that was it, they blew my last shot."

Looking back, Speaker realizes he may have been able to raise the $100,000 to charter a flight home. He said he didn't because he didn't think he was a health risk to others.

"In hindsight you can try … say maybe I could have planned something out, maybe could have raised money," he said. "[But] understand at this whole time everyone told me I'm not contagious and no threat to anyone."

Speaker boarded a plane back to the United States because he feared he would die in Europe.

"We said, 'Let's get home and get to Denver,'" he said about his and his wife's decision to leave Europe. "Both of us worried if I turned myself [in] the next day that's it. It's very real that I could have died there. … People told me if I was anywhere but Denver, I'll die."

What happened was a result of confusion, panic and a desire to stay alive, but never to hurt strangers or his family, Speaker said. He hopes the TB tests of his fellow passengers come back negative, and he said he wants them to know he is sorry.

"I feel awful. I've lived in state of constant fear and anxiety. I'm exhausted, for a week now. And to think that someone else is now feeling that, I wouldn't want anyone to feel that way -- it's awful," he said. "I just hope they can forgive me and understand that I really believed [I] wasn't putting people at risk because that's what the people told me."