December 2010, I am 11 years old at the time.
On a normal school day at about 10am, I get a horrible headache. The headache just came upon me, very suddenly. I had just assumed that I was thirsty, as I hadn't had much to eat or drink that morning. I thought this was very strange because I never get headaches as a way of my body telling me that I am hungry or thirsty. So I drank quite a lot of cold water, thinking it would help. It didn't help, so I thought maybe I was just really hungry, which again I thought was strange because I don't get headaches if I am hungry or thirsty.
The headache only got worse during the course of the day and by the time I got home by 4:30 I went straight to bed and slept the whole night through.
I was woken up at 6:00 the next morning, after sleeping for nearly 14 hours. I immediately cried out to my mum, because I had felt much worse than I did the day before.
After that, I ran to the bathroom and vomited, I stayed off school that day and went to the hospital. They told me that there was a bug going around, so they gave me paracetamol and sent me home.
This pattern continued over the course of four days, in which time I developed a stiff neck, constantly vomiting and had a strong dislike to bright lights.
On December 16th 2010, I went to the hospital as I had been for the past few days before, my mum had asked the doctor whether I had meningitis, because she had seen a medical segment of a morning show that in order to have meningitis you can have those specific symptoms, but you didn't need the rashes, because they may show up later or possibly not at all.