Adrienne Murray
Aged 20 years
Meningococcal meningitis and septicaemia
Valentine's Day weekend of 2004 changed my life forever. No, it wasn't because I was a sophomore in college and it was my first time celebrating Valentine's Day with someone special, it was because of something that I just thought was the flu that rushed me to the emergency room.
I started to feel ill after my boyfriend Zach and I had come back from dinner on the 14th. I didn't think much of it, and went to sleep, but was awoken in the middle of the night with vomiting, and shortly after that, began to feel weaker and weaker to the point where I could barely walk.
Early the next morning I was still sure I had some awful bout of the flu, but when Zach began asking me if I thought I should go to the ER, my first response was no. I had never been to an ER before and surely whatever I had was not that serious. After some urging on his part, I agreed to go to the ER.
I still remember how weak I was and how difficult it was to climb down the two flights of stairs to get to the car. When we got to the ER, I was so weak I had to be wheeled in. When I was taken in to get my vital stats taken, everything appeared normal. The attending ER doctor at the time told me that it was probably just the flu, that I could go home and drink a lot of Gatorade and I should be fine. I asked if I could stay and have a bag of fluid instead because I was afraid of going home so soon.
After a few bags, the nurses were nervous that my blood pressure was not going up. In fact, it had dropped down so low that the machines were unable to read my blood pressure and even the head nurse had a hard time taking it manually. I don't remember the exact number but it was somewhere around 40 over 20. Thank God there were some nurses who were paying close enough attention to my symptoms because shortly after that, I began to develop purple blotches all over my skin. This got their attention because they hadn't seen anything like that before, and had my vital stats taken again.
In that short amount of time, my white blood count had sky-rocketed. They kept me in the ER to continue observing and pumping liquids into me. Most of that night is a little hazy, although I am surprised how much I do remember. I remember at around 11pm having an internal medicine doctor and another doctor see me to figure out what was wrong with me. I also remember having to get a spinal tap done and also that one of the doctors told Zach to call my parents because it was serious. (We had only been dating for a little over a month at the time, and he had never met or spoken to my parents).
I remember being told that I had meningococcal meningitis and being so scared that I was going to die. What I didn't know until later was that the doctor wanted my parents to fly in from MA to MD because they weren't sure if I was going to survive. I was in the ICU for a few days, which I don't really remember, and then was transferred to a regular floor where I was for nearly two weeks.
I remember being so weak in my hospital bed that it was a monumental effort to even roll over in bed, never mind even trying to get up. For a while, the nurses did not want me getting up, but when they finally did, it was such a struggle to even get to the bathroom. Sometimes when I tried to get up, I would black out and have to sit back down again. Just when I felt like I was getting stronger, I had a setback from the steroids I was on. I had some sort of reaction to the steroids and I began to get incredibly weak again.
I also formed a blood clot in my upper arm as a result of the IVs that had been prodded in my veins for so long. To this day I have a few numb spots on my fingers and calves, and have a few scars from those purplish blood marks on my skin but luckily I do not have any other lasting effects from the meningitis.
I do think about how incredibly lucky I am though that I was with Zach, who brought me to the ER quickly enough that they had caught the meningitis before it got to my brain. I truly believe that God had sent him to me because he did save my life. If I hadn't been with him, I would have been by myself in my dorm room and would not have dragged myself to the ER.
I try not to think about what could have happened, although sometimes I do and I am very emotional about my experience, even now, almost seven years later. Zach and I got married on May 26, 2007 and I continue to count my blessings because life truly is a gift. I have begun to view life differently and see how fragile it really is, and how important it is to truly live each day with the people who mean the most to you.
Adrienne Murray
MeningitisUK · Registered Charity No.1076774