Shanel Bass' story

My daughter was constantly having headaches for 3 weeks. I was back and forth to the doctors and they just sent me home every time with no explanation.

One night she took a turn for the worse, crying with headache and her limbs just flopped. I phoned for the ambulance and when it arrived the paramedic said, "well I don't think it's meningitis as she doesn't have any symptoms apart from headache, but we can take her up to run further checks". My answer was obviously yes.

She was sick on the way to the hospital. When we arrived they monitored her overnight. The next morning she was no better, if not worse. They did a lumbar puncture and confirmed it was meningitis. She was medicated with antibiotics as well as steroids, after the first dose she was affected by any light in the room.

After a week in hospital we were sent home and was medicated at home for a further 2 weeks.

She is now partly deaf in her left ear but I'm so lucky she is still here.

I want to get the awareness out there that even if your child/children do not have the most common symptoms for meningitis don't leave it. I blame myself for leaving her with it for 3 weeks even though I had taken her to the doctors.

We still have check ups at the hospital but the last one we attended everything was normal and she is doing perfectly fine, she's my little angel.

Charlie Knight
May 2015