My Classmates Thought I Was Drunk. I Had Meningitis.

My whole class thought I was drunk. I was swaying into the road, barely able to stay upright during what should have been a simple walk from our school to the local church for play rehearsal. My teachers were barking at me to get out of the road. Everyone was laughing. I was eleven years old, and in the early stages of meningococcal meningitis.

Nobody recognized how sick I was, including my parents.

At first, I had a general feeling of being unwell, a bit stuffy. Flu-like. I had headaches. I’d started to become sensitive to light, but not dramatically. I was still going to school. We had a performance coming up, rehearsals to get through. I pushed on.

What I remember most distinctly from that walk to rehearsal is how unwell and disoriented I felt. But I was a kid, and nobody around me seemed concerned, so I kept going.

The next day I went to school and football practice afterward. That’s when the fever and chills started. It was unfortunate timing—it was a snowy cold day, so everyone assumed the cold caused my chills. It felt different to me, though. I knew.

That night, after practice, I spent the entire evening crying. My headaches had gotten worse. My fever was out of control. I couldn’t stop shaking. The lights were making me disoriented. At one point I vomited. I was given some liquid medicine and sent to bed.

I woke up the next morning with symptoms so bad I kept falling in and out of consciousness. And I’d developed a large purple lump on my leg, just above the ankle. I couldn’t walk.

My mother assumed the lump was from football—that I’d taken a knock and not mentioned it. I hadn’t. There had been no injury.

I begged her to take me to the doctor. I felt so unwell I couldn’t stay awake. She thought I was faking it, and she only gave in when I started crying because the pain was so bad.

I was lucky; we were able to get an appointment with our GP within the hour. By the time we were sitting in the waiting room, a rash had started to develop.

Our GP knew immediately that I was at serious risk, suspecting meningitis. I was sent to the local hospital straight away for immediate testing and monitoring. On my way to the hospital, my rash worsened and my legs went completely purple.

The diagnosis was meningococcal meningitis and sepsis. The doctors told us that I should have come to hospital sooner, and that I was about an hour from death when I arrived. My legs were almost black by the end of the day. They found fluid in my brain.

I ended up okay. Thankfully.

I remember being quite fearful and anxious throughout my hospital stay. The way my legs changed colour triggered a fear in me. I was checking them obsessively, terrified I was going to need an amputation. 

I was in hospital for three or four weeks. When I left, something had shifted. My personality changed. I was withdrawn and depressed. Looking back now, I remember a sense of feeling empty. It wasn’t that I didn’t care, but everything was overwhelming. I quit football and never returned to sports.

My parents are anti-vaxxers. They’re distrustful of doctors and nurses in general. Because of that, they refused to take me to any follow-up health checks after I left the hospital. When my doctor recommended a vaccine a few weeks after I was discharged, my parents refused that too. They went against medical advice.

Their distrust left me with lifelong health consequences. 

I have hearing and vision difficulties. Chronic fatigue has followed me since the infection. My immune system is compromised—I get four or five infections a year, sometimes more. My speech has been affected and so has my short-term memory. Before meningitis, I had problems with balance and motor skills; these issues worsened significantly after the infection and became more prominent. I have mood swings, muscle weakness, and joint problems.

My doctors have determined that the meningitis and the sepsis triggered these health issues—they didn’t exist before, and they all arrived at once.

I try to maintain my physical and mental health as an adult, but I keep getting sick. It’s exhausting. Sometimes I honestly feel like meningitis is still ruining my life—I have constant battles with sickness and health issues that prevent me from living a stable existence.

I no longer have certain choices available to me. Meningitis took those.

Since I got infected, I’ve taken whatever vaccines become available—including yearly flu and COVID vaccines. I recently got all the mandatory baby vaccines, including the MMR, because I wasn’t allowed them as a child. I would rather be safe than sorry. I understand now, in the most personal way possible, what bacterial meningitis and sepsis can do.

If I’d been protected by the vaccine, maybe I would have continued athletics—that could have developed into something. Or maybe I’d just be healthy enough to do what I want to do, instead of facing limitations every single day.

Despite everything I’ve been through, I’m considered one of the lucky ones.

If I had the choice, I would go back and get vaccinated. Getting vaccinated is the difference between a healthy life and a life filled with long-term health issues that could impact quality of life. 

Vaccines save lives!

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