Meningitis in your words

David Herrick's story

  • Location: USA
  • Categories: Bacterial meningitis
  • Age: Adult 25-59
  • Relationship: Self
  • Outcome: Recovery with after effects
  • After effects: Co-ordination problems
David Herrick

July 17th 2017 - major headache, major earache, infection, 103 temperature.

My daughter found me wandering around the house before she went to work in excruciating pain, not being able to see or hear.

She called an ambulance, they took me to the hospital and the doctors told my daughter that it didn't look good for me - if I lived I might come out deaf and blind.

"Every time they tried to wake me up I guess I was fighting because I didn't know what was going on because I couldn't see or hear."

They incubated me knocked me out for 6 days. Every time they tried to wake me up I guess I was fighting because I didn't know what was going on because I couldn't see or hear.

I have definitely lost a lot of hearing and my eyesight isn't as good as it was and my balance is off. I get very tired very easily.

During the time I was incubated in the hospital I contracted pneumonia, so that almost got me too.
I finally got out 10 days after I was in the hospital. I was very weak when I got home, I couldn't drink water, couldn't talk, couldn't drink milk, just took every ounce of energy to eat a half at a small taco.

Then a month to the day I went in for meningitis I ended up getting a blood clot in my lung so then I had to take blood thinners for 6 months. It's been a really rough year there's more to the story but you get the gist of it there.

David Herrick
August 2018

Causes of meningitis and septicaemia
Causes of meningitis and septicaemia
What causes meningitis?