In January 2024, when I was 19 years old, I went on a trip with my friends to Portugal. One week into the trip, I began to have some headaches and started vomiting, which I thought was worrying. I started to vomit more and more and had a high fever.
Once I came back home, it was terrible - even worse. I wasn't myself anymore. My mom called the ambulance and went to the hospital. At that point, my face was paralysed and I was unable to talk, I became severely irritable and angry, which is not like me and I was confused. They did some tests, but nothing came back conclusive.
For two weeks I was given antibiotics like it was bacterial, but it didn't go away. The doctors didn't know what to do anymore, so they transferred me to another hospital way more specialised. My fever and headaches returned and I became paralysed many times, so they put me in a coma to stop the symptoms. After 6 months, I was a bit better and they let me go home, even though I wasn't fully healed.
It was a really tough journey, and to this day, the doctors don't know what the cause of the meningitis was. I still have some episodes where I experience fever and severe headaches, and we don't understand why. I'm way more exhausted now than I was before, I’ve lost some hearing because of it and I get bad memory loss often.
We need more awareness of the signs because I waited too long to see a doctor. Meningitis is serious and can destroy your quality of life.
JulieAnne Gauvreau
December 2024