My story
Posted , 4 users are following.
I'm female, 18, never been seriously ill before in my life
The week it happened I had a really bad cold. And on the Friday of that week I woke up feeling incredibly achey and just thought it was flu symptoms.
I spent the whole day laid on the sofa and in the evening my mum noticed some red dots on my wrists and then soon after that a rash developing on my stomach, she called our local clinic and I was rushed in after my GP gave me many injections of antibiotics. Doing that apparently saved my life as I most likely would have died if treatment had been prolonged anymore.
An ambulance was called and I was rushed into hospital. In A&E I was quite disorientated and didn't understand what was wrong with me.
When I woke up in intensive care 3 days later my parents told me the whole story.
I'd been diagnosed with Meningicoccal septicemia and also pneumonia. On the Friday night my heart nearly stopped. On Saturday I was improving and responding to the medication, but then Sunday I took a serious turn for the worse and I contracted ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) ; basically, lung failure. The doctor was panicking because he couldn't think of anything else to do and then after calling a fellow doctor who suggested putting me on my stomach (which he then did) my body finally started fighting back.
From Sunday night I kept getting better. I spent 6 days in intensive care and then another 6 in a normal ward.
All I know is that I was very lucky the way things turned out. I dread to think what would have happened if my mum hadn't decided to stay at home with me rather than go to the pub, or had she just told me to sleep it off, still thinking it was flu. Had her instinct not kicked in to do something, then I wouldn't be here now.
Never ignore the signs. Imagine how much you'd regret it
1 like, 3 replies
Mary678 Guest
Posted
I know you posted this a long time ago, but I am hoping that you remember the name of the doctor who suggested putting you on your stomach. There is a good reason why this made such a difference – why your body was then able to “fight back”, but it doesn't seem to be generally known and so patients are normally left on their backs.
I am qualified in osteopathy and naturopathy, and I read your blog while preparing a lecture for an osteopathic post-graduate course. I also read a lot of very old osteopathic texts dating from around 1900 – ie before the days of antibiotics. In those days osteopaths treated all sorts of conditions including meningitis, and one of the things that is mentioned in ALL those old texts is to lie the patient on their front and NEVER, NEVER on their back. In the lecture I gave, I explained the reason for this, and cited your story as part of the lecture. (Thank you!)
Since then, I keep hearing about people who either die or are severely disabled after contracting meningitis, and in hospital they always seem to be on their back. I have a friend who is a nurse in a ward with many meningitis patients and she said patients are always kept on their backs.
The problem for me is, who will listen to an osteopath? I would so love to have the information and explanations from these old-school osteopaths spread to medical wards generally, because it might save some lives, just like it saved yours.
So I am hoping that you remember the name of the doctor who did this, so I can talk to them. Otherwise the name of the hospital will help.
Of course, if there are any doctors out there who read this and are interested, I would love to hear from you.
me29267 Mary678
Posted
Rasmom Guest
Posted
Hi I'm 45 and got bacterial miningitis through an ear infection I got!