In September 2022, I was diagnosed with meningococcal meningitis and septicaemia.
I began feeling unwell one day at school, I thought I had a bad flu. I had really bad chills and couldn't control my body temperature. I went home that day and then overnight, I got rapidly worse. I was vomiting, my head was pounding and my entire body was aching. I couldn't do anything to relieve the pain and I couldn't sit still or close my eyes; it was so painful.
In the morning, I was shaking, vomiting lots still, was sensitive to light and had an absolutely excruciating headache, so bad that I was screaming at my mum that I felt like I was dying. Mum looked for a rash, but I only had one little red spot on my leg and one red spot on my forearm, not what would be a typical meningitis rash. However, mum called the health line and they told her to take me to a doctor within 24 hours. Luckily, my mum realised that it was worse than that and took me down to the emergency department at hospital. They took me in straight away. I was screaming from the pain, I could hardly see anything and was completely delusional. Thankfully, they injected antibiotics into me straight away, and after a while, they put me into an induced coma.
I was then helicoptered to a city four hours away, as the city I lived in didn’t have a brain surgeon. I was lucky they acted so quickly in the emergency department. The head doctor there later told my mum how lucky I was to have survived, as at the rate my vitals were dropping, I had only minutes left. My brain had so much fluid on it that they weren't able to do a spinal tap so it took a few days for them to figure out what was wrong with me. I was in an induced coma for about 48 hours, and luckily the antibiotics worked well with my body, so the pressure of the fluid in my brain didn't get to the point where I would have had to have surgery.
When I woke up, I was in a different city and was very confused, extremely sick and delusional. In hospital, I had to be fed through a tube in my nose, was in ICU (intensive care unit) for multiple days, had a catheter for a week and wasn't able to move. My senses had been affected a lot; I could hardly see anything, my hearing was off, everyone's voices sounded different, my taste had changed, and everything I ate tasted very yucky for a while.
After a few days in ICU, I was flown by ambulance plane back to my home city, where I was transferred to a hospital room. I was still very sick, had a lung and chest infection, and was mentally very upset, coming to terms with everything that was happening. I was sixteen years old at the time, in my second-to-last year of high school. In New Zealand, this is the year that you have to sit your university entrance exams. This was devastating for me as I was always a high achiever, someone who was in the running for head girl, very into sports, and a social butterfly. So this completely changed my life.
After I was discharged from hospital, I wasn't able to return to school for a couple of months, and even when I did, I was only capable of doing half days for many weeks as I was extremely fatigued. I was in hospital for about a week, so when I was discharged, I was grateful to be home, but the recovery was a long, hard process. I wasn't able to walk by myself, I could hardly eat and I wasn't able to do anything since I couldn't see well or hear well. The days were long and hard. It was tough having my friends visit and seeing photos from them of all the adventures they were getting up to and school and parties, while I was trapped at home, in pain, having just gone through the most horrific experience.
I was very lucky, though, with the support I received from my family and the rehabilitation centre in my city. After about six months, I would say I was mostly back to normal. My eyesight has gotten 90% back to full health, as well as my hearing and taste. I am lucky not to have any severe long-term effects. However, I still struggle day-to-day with getting extremely fatigued, I have trouble concentrating on my university studies, and remembering new information. I also struggle a lot with my mental health, and have quite intense health anxiety following my sickness. It is similar to having a brain injury. However, I have lots of support, and I continue to remind myself how lucky I am to still be here today.
Since being sick, I have advocated for awareness of meningitis and meningococcal disease throughout my city, both at high school and university. I want to do more, however, to get people educated to hopefully prevent anyone from having to go through such a horrific experience.