Timeline of Speaker's TB Odyssey

Atlanta lawyer Andrew Speaker, 31, made headlines this week when he traveled on an international commercial flight with a rare form of drug-resistant tuberculosis.

(abc news)

He sat down with "Good Morning America" anchor Diane Sawyer this morning to discuss his diagnosis early this year and the unwanted notoriety he received this week for flying to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon, despite advice from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that he should not travel.

The following is a timeline of events from various news sources tracing the diagnosis of Speaker's disease through his trip back to the United States early this week:

December 2007: Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old lawyer from Atlanta, gets engaged to girlfriend Sarah Cooksey, a law student.
[Source: ABC News]

January 2007: Speaker suffers a fall and goes to the doctor, worried he has bruised a rib. Doctors X-ray his chest and find an abnormality that requires further testing. These tests reveal that he has tuberculosis, though he shows no symptoms.
[Source: ABC News]

May 11, 2007: Speaker and Cooksey, his fiancée, are about to leave on a trip to Europe for their wedding and honeymoon when health officials meet with Speaker to urge him not to travel. Speaker did not think the warning was very serious. "They said, 'We would prefer you not to go on the trip,'" he says. "And that's when my father said, 'OK, are you saying because he's a risk to anybody or are you simply saying it to cover yourself?' And they said, 'We have to tell you that to cover ourselves, but he's not a risk.'"
[Sources: ABC News, Denver Post, CNN.com, 11Alive.com]

To reiterate the warning, Fulton County health officials try to deliver a letter to Speaker saying, in part, "It is strongly recommended that you postpone your travel and see a specialist in Denver, Colo." The letter never reaches Speaker, because he has already left for his wedding.
[Source: CNN.com]

May 12, 2007: Speaker and Cooksey fly from Atlanta to Paris to begin their trip.
[Source: ABC News]