Emma Mackay
Aged 32
Survivor
Emma had been feeling under the weather for a week but thought nothing of it, until she could barely stand, was confused and started acting strangely. Next thing she knew she was in hospital and couldn't remember her two children...
The date of Saturday, September 5, 2009, will stick in my memory forever. I remember getting my three-year-old Catriona ready for a friend's birthday party and taking her photo, but my husband had to take her there as I felt too ill. I stayed at home with our nine-week-old little girl Samantha, who I was breast feeding.
Then the next thing I remember is waking up in Queen Margaret hospital three days later on the Tuesday.
I had a cold the week before and thought nothing of my symptoms - a sore head, stiff neck and ear infection.
My husband said when he and my daughter came home at about 4.30pm that night I was sat on the sofa with the baby in my arms. I looked so awful that he told me to go to bed and he would make dinner. The two of them had dinner and he then brought the baby to me to be fed at around 8pm. He said I could barely get up, was staggering about all over the place and kept falling down. Apparently I was very confused. He made me sit on the bed while he ran down stairs to phone my mum.
When my mum arrived she said I was acting very strangely and that I didn't respond when she spoke to me. She immediately ran downstairs and told my husband to phone 999. The ambulance arrived within 10 minutes which was great but the way I was treated by the paramedic is beyond words.
He asked my mum if I was drunk. When she told him no he assumed I was on drugs. She told him again most definitely not as I had a nine-week-old baby.
They put me in the chair to take me down the stairs because by then I could not walk. I started flailing my arms a bit and the paramedic shouted at me to stop, saying he would just let me go and I would fall down the stairs.
When the paramedic and ambulance driver got me to the bottom of the stairs to take me to hospital my husband started to panic and asked the paramedic what to do because the baby had not been fed and he was told: "It either starves or you go to Tesco." He was in a complete panic he said because the baby was screaming to be fed and our older daughter was wondering what was going on.
I thought being a paramedic was meant to be a caring profession. I hope we never have to phone for an ambulance again.
I arrived at Victoria Hospital on Saturday night around 9pm and no one knew what was wrong with me. My temperature and blood pressure were only up slightly but I was in great pain and my hair was soaked with sweat.
In the early hours of Sunday morning a team from the Queen Margaret Hospital came and took me by ambulance to the hospital in Dunfermline as it had an Intensive Care Unit. There they performed brain scans and x-rays and still couldn't find anything, the only thing they could see was that I had two tiny little pockets of fluid at the front of my brain. My temperature had started to rise now, my hands and feet were cold and I was in great pain so they started pumping me full of antibiotics.
They then did a lumber puncture which showed that I had pneumococcal meningitis. I ended up on a ventilator for two days and in ICU for four days. When I woke up on the Tuesday I couldn't talk or use my hands and couldn't understand what people were saying to me.
Later I did start to understand what was being said. The nurses kept asking me questions about my kids but I didn't have a clue what they were talking about. Within a few hours I could remember my three-year-old but couldn't remember anything about the baby. When I did start to remember both the kids I couldn't remember things like their age or when they were born. I was in severe of pain for days and had to take a lot of painkillers.
One of the doctors who saw me on the first day I was admitted to Queen Margaret Hospital saw me four days later in the café cuddling my baby. He couldn't believe the change he saw in me and said I had been very seriously ill. I know I've been very lucky.
I was allowed home after 10 days in hospital. Even now, a few weeks later, I still feel tired, get headaches and my memory is still affected. I never want to feel like this again it's the worst thing I've ever been through. I can safely say you've never had a sore head until you've had this - it feels like your whole head and eyes are going to explode.
I now know the classic signs of meningitis but can honestly say they don't always show until it's almost too late, I always thought there was a rash with meningitis and that it affected children. I now know better.
I am slowly starting to remember things about the three days I lost, not much but a little. Maybe it's better if I don't remember everything. I'm just so glad that I'm home. I can't believe that I nearly left my family....I love my husband and kids to bits and never want this to happen again.
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