This past month you may have noticed a decline in content being put out on the website. Firstly, I was to deeply apologise to everyone for this. I was hospitalised three weeks ago for meningitis and although have since been discharged, I’ve also being taking things a little easy for a while.
Thinking about it, it feels like it happened to someone else a long time ago, rather than happening to me just a few weeks ago. The thing about meningitis is that it’s a deadly disease, but with the same symptoms as a common cold or flu. There’s also very little concrete reasons as to what exactly triggers the illness, but it’s been known to be more susceptible in those with low immune systems such as infants or the elderly.
That’s why when I first started to get some migraines – a first for myself, and a fever, my doctor thought it was nothing more than the flu. Healthy teenagers don’t normally get meningitis, but then they don’t normally get chickenpox either, but we’ll go onto that later.
For five days, I was at home, in agony in my bed, sweating and almost delirious thinking I would simply wait out the fever. Without any signs of getting better after those five days though I started to really worry, and having only just moved into a new house, I didn’t want to be by myself. I can’t remember it so well now, but I remember getting myself to the train station and getting a ticket for home.
When I returned to my family, I looked like I just ran a marathon, something that would surprise anyone who had ever seen my feeble attempts at running before. My mum was immediately aware that something was horribly wrong, in the only way a mother knows, and sent me off to A&E.
Two hours waiting time later, I was seen by a nurse, who then called a doctor, who then called a different nurse, who then took my blood and promptly disappeared. The doctor then came back and told me I would have to stay in hospital for the night, until my blood results came back, and also because I still hadn’t stopped sweating and frankly looked like I was about to pass out at any moment.
Dehydration is a really big problem, and one of the easiest things to overlook. Luckily I was quickly attached to an IV drip and sat in a bed on a old person’s ward. The wards for young women were all full and so I had taken a bed on a ward where the age average was 70. I shared the room with three lovely women, Dorris, Joan and Elizabeth. By the time I left the hospital, Joan had been discharged and Dorris had passed away.
The nurses of the ward seemed especially happy to have someone under the age of 60, and spoiled me constantly during my stay in hospital with extra biscuits every time the tea trolly came around. Because I wasn’t hungry much of the time, soon my bedside table resembled a biscuit shop, as I had almost one of every biscuit available and several lots of chocolate bourbons and jammy dodgers, which the nurses started giving me after realising those were the only two I had eaten (not that I don’t like other biscuits, I had only wanted to eat twice, and those were my choices at those times.)
The blood tests came back with bad news, I had meningitis, but they couldn’t be sure at what severity. There are two types of meningitis, a virus version which although horrible, not lethal. The second is a bacterial type, which is lethal and has to be treated with antibiotics and other things. Now when you get diagnosed with meningitis, they give you antibiotics before they figure out which strain you get, because with a chance of it being the bacterial type, it’s better safe than sorry.
For a full week I was hooked up to an IV, which gave me antibiotics three times a day. The day after I was admitted into hospital, besides several more blood tests, I was given a lumber puncture, which is a method of taking brain fluid from the spine for testing. It involves sticking a rather large needle into your lower back and waiting for the brain fluid which naturally goes down your spine, to sort of go down into the needle. There’s a little bit of pulling, but unlike blood, you can’t take brain fluid as fast, or else you’d recreate that scene in Starship Troopers with the Brain Bug.
I’m not great with needles, but I’m used to getting my blood taken. So those needles are fine. Lumber punctures on the other hand are a completely different experience. It’s probably the first time I’ve been scared of a needle, which I had the misfortune of seeing before the procedure. Local anaesthetic is applied to the area where the needle goes in, in a form of a smaller needle injection.
The doctor then waits a while for the anaesthetic to kick in, and then sticks in the bigger needle. Although my lower back was numbed, I still felt the needle. I don’t remember the pain anymore, but I remember the fear I had. Fear that was fuelled by my migraine and fever. I lay on my side, with he doctor taking my fluid from my back, and a nurse holding my hands as I cried.
I’m not proud of that moment, and I don’t think the procedure is half as scary as I made it out to be. I think it was a combination of having felt ill for so long, being told I was very ill and then seeing a big needle. A part of me was convinced I was going to die.
Over the next week I would have more blood taken, lots of blood taken and several CT scans to check my brain activity. I was prone to panic attacks due to a psychological side-effect of my body using up oxygen faster than my brain could compute, making me think I wasn’t breathing properly and hyperventilating. Overall, it was probably one of the worst couple of weeks in my life, which no number of jammy dodgers could quite make better.
After two weeks of being in hospital, on lots of antibiotics and transferring between normal wards and the intensive care unit, I was finally deemed fit and able to go home, for lots of rest and a continuation of antibiotics. I have since spent my time resting, partly due to being worn out still and partly due to the fact my new house still has no internet connection. This week however I’ll be back and contributing new content back to normal.
Thank you everyone who has supported me this past month, sent me get well emails and basically been lovely awesome people. I’m sorry you had to wait so long, but I’m back and ready to roll now.