In August, a 24-year-old man from Virginia developed difficulty breathing and bilateral lobe infiltrates 2 months after driving through California. During initial evaluation, typical pneumonia was suspected, and he was treated with antibiotics. Efforts to diagnosis the pneumonia were unsuccessful. In October, a laryngeal mass was detected, and laryngeal cancer was suspected; treatment with steroids and bronchodilators did not result in improvement. Lung biopsy and laryngoscopy detected diffuse granular tissue. He was treated with amphotericin B and discharged after 5 days. What was the disease?
What might have been done differently to decrease the patient’s recovery time from 3 months to one week?