I thought I was getting a cold.
It was the first ‘nice’ spring day of the year. I’d started a new job and didn’t have the time to get poorly so I took a Berocca. I stayed in and thought it had become a migraine too.
Over the weekend I felt worse and worse until I went to an urgent care clinic who told me to go to hospital. They misdiagnosed me with a migraine and sent me home telling me to go to bed and I’d feel better.
After a period of drifting in and out of sleep, in and out of pain levels from moderate to unbearable, I called home. Told my parents I had a bad migraine and wouldn’t be able to fly up to Scotland for the weekend. 8 hours later they arrived on my doorstep in London. I was so poorly, I wasn’t going to even bother answering the door.
Roll forward being taken into hospital on a bank holiday Friday, having to be transferred hospitals to get to an MRI that was staffed and have a lumbar puncture - and it was confirmed. Bacterial meningitis - pneumococcal to be exact.
I’ve lost a week or so of my memory from seizures and getting worse, right side paralysed, I couldn’t talk, walk, and even my sight was going before I got better.
Another hospital transfer and I started to slowly feel better whilst trying to regain the ability to walk and talk etc.
I was feeling terrible being in hospital now for a month and asked to get home. I was allowed out with a line inserted to my arm for meds to be administered at home. But I was taken home too soon and went downhill fast.
48 hours later I was readmitted as an emergency and needed urgent care again. Another stint in another hospital. This time I got home and stayed at home with nurses coming out morning & night to see me to administer meds for another 6 weeks.
July 4th was my Independence Day from the heavy steroids and anti-biotics. A celebration indeed. But, I found that this just the first stage of the recovery.