I fell ill in August 2015 following a weekend away with my husband, Adrian.
On Monday morning I started to feel generally unwell and thought I might have flu. On Tuesday I was worse. By Wednesday morning I had a high temperature, vomiting and was very drowsy. Adrian had stayed home from work as he was worried and by now I had a severe headache too so he called an ambulance. I was diagnosed with a bad migraine but by 2pm he could not rouse me.
He called an ambulance again and this time I was blue-lighted to A&E. I don’t remember much at all about the following week as I was transferred to ICU and placed in a medically induced coma.
The hospital diagnosed pneumococcal meningitis. Apparently my whole body swelled up so I looked like a Michelin man! However, I slowly improved and was woken up to find I couldn’t move my right leg and my right arm was also very weak.
After more scans, they told me the meningitis had caused a kind of stroke called a watershed infarct affecting both sides of my brain.
By now, after a few days on the high dependency unit, I was transferred to the stroke unit. As you can imagine this was not a lot of fun as I was one of the younger patients, but I was given a side room and slowly began to improve. I was having regular physio and was only just able to stand at first, but gradually my walking improved and after 20 days in hospital was discharged home.