Meningitis in your words

Boyd Steel Rogers' story

Location: USA
Categories: Group B meningococcal (MenB)
Age: Child 6-12
Relationship: Parent
Outcome: Bereavement

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Meningitis in your words
Boyd Steel Rogers

My name is Misty Rogers. My husband Kasey and I are from Shasta Lake, CA, and we lost our 7 1/2 year old son, Boyd Steel, on May 10th 2013 to meningococcal meningitis B.

He was the youngest of our three children - our son Micah 24, our daughter Jordan 17, and Boyd 7 1/2. Life was going great, we were all happy. I could have never imagined it would all change in just one day.
It was 2:00 on Wednesday May 8th and I picked Boyd up after school because we were going to our grandma Verna's house to visit. His teacher told me his back was hurting and he thought it was because he had been sitting on the floor while the class watched a movie. When we got to our grandma Verna's he had started not feeling well and she wasn’t there so we went home. That evening he didn’t feel well, we figured he'd gotten the flu which was going around. That night Boyd was going to sleep in his big sister Jordan's room with her, but got sick on her bed so I slept with him on the couch.

The next morning he was sick but nothing out of the ordinary for the flu, no rash and no other symptoms that made me think it was anything serious. I went to the store at 9:30 to get Boyd some more medicine and Pedialite and when I got home Jordan left for college classes and Kasey left to work. Boyd finally held down a popsicle so I was feeling better because I thought he was feeling better.

Shortly after, his temperature rose and all of the sudden he started not making any sense. I got scared and put him in the car to go to the emergency room. On the way out we passed his dad Kasey and I stopped to tell him where we were going. He said 'I love you Boyd' and Boyd said 'I love you dad'. He thought I was over reacting, but those would be the last words Boyd would ever say. I drove to our doctors, he seemed to be ok then all of a sudden he wasn’t responding to me so I drove as fast as I could to the hospital 10 miles away.

"I fell from my chair onto the ground and cried from the deepest part of my heart, and said “no, you’re wrong!” But there was nothing they could do."

At about 11:00 I carried him into the emergency room and frantically told them there was something very wrong with my son. They immediately took him back and began to work on him. I was sitting just outside the curtain thinking “It’s ok. We're in the hospital, they're taking care of him and everything is gonna be fine.” Well it wasn't.

The doctor came out and asked me if there was anyone I wanted to call and I said yes and called my husband, my daughter Jordan, my aunt Jeri, and my grandma Verna, and told them to come to the hospital. When they arrived the doctor said Boyd should have woken up by now, but hadn't so they were airlifting him to UC Davis in Sacramento, CA.

He would never wake up. They tried to save him. The doctors asked to speak to my husband and I late that Thursday evening. As we waked into the conference room I prayed to God they weren't going to tell us exactly what they did - he was not going to make it. I fell from my chair onto the ground and cried from the deepest part of my heart, and said “no, you’re wrong!” But there was nothing they could do.
His big brother Micah flew in from Oregon and my husband’s parents and his sister Amy flew in from New Mexico. Everyone came to be with us and say their goodbyes. And with all our family and friends there with us we spent our last day with our baby boy ;( I held him in my arms while he took his last breaths and I just remember screaming “No, not my baby!!!

It was a nightmare! It just didn't seem real. They couldn’t say for sure what he had gotten because they couldn't test him until after he passed away, and then told us. It was a rapid moving form, it was literally 24 hrs from his first symptom till he was gone. He just came home from school that day and two days later we were driving back home without our youngest child, in shock, with hearts beyond broken.

It has been 2 1/2 years now and every day is still a struggle to get through. We miss Boyd every minute of every day. He was only 7 1/2, but he was a great artist and writer, and he was reading six novels at the same time. He could build anything out of anything, he especially loved Lego. He loved to ride his quad and hangout with dad. He was everyone’s favorite cousin and everyone’s best friend, and all the little girls wanted to grow up and marry him.

"He is missed so much by everyone. He was our sunshine, our buttnugget, our little boy."

"To my Buttnugget, I still cry each and every day, I still ask God why he took you away. I still beg for you to come home, my heart still cannot believe that you are gone. Your little shoes are still by the front door, right where they were left the last time they were worn. The alarm on my phone still goes off at 2, because that was the time when I would get you from school. Now all I have are pictures to see your smile, longing and aching for you all the while. I still go in your room each night to say prayers, but I can't kiss you goodnight because you are not here. I miss all your stories and the things you would make, I don't know how much more of this I can take. It just gets so much harder everyday, I still ask God why he took you away. I know that you're happy and you're having fun, but I just want you back my sweet angel son."

Boyd Steel Rogers 7/23/05-5/10/13.

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