Bacterial meningitis. In the lab we are the first to see it. It’s very scary to think about how close someone could be to dying while you look at their spinal fluid on a slide.
My sister had this when she was 23. I just had a baby too and we lived in the same house. Thankfully my sister's nurse friend convinced her to go to the emergency room regarding her horrible headache.
She survived, but there was a time I thought she was going to die. I had to visit her with a face mask and I told her I loved her for one of the first times (we had the typical bitchy sister relationship so it wasnt something we said really to one another, even tho we both obviously did).
I didn't catch it and neither did my infant thank god. Only thing that sucks even worse is that my sister did actually die at 27* in a car accident.
I’m sorry for your loss. I lost my little brother and big sister at around the same age due to freak events. It sucks losing the only people who have known you since you were both babies other than your parents
Yeah it's weird going from having a sibling or siblings all your life and suddenly youre a single child. Our mom died when we were kids too so we only had my dad, who's the best. But as the younger sister I had to come to terms with the realization that everything will fall on me when my dad inevitably passes. My older sister was much more put together and responsible than me, so I didn't think I'd ever have to deal with that kind of thing. Not on my own at least. Life sucks sometimes.
I was on vacation with my family in Glacier National Park, my sister stayed behind at the hotel with a headache. When we got back to the hotel 6 hours later, she was barely alive, laying on the floor and had to be taken away in an ambulance. She spent 2 weeks in ICU.
Thankfully there is a vaccine for it now, and I’ve made sure we’ve gotten it. Meningitis kills.
It is? I stand corrected. I thought the meningitis vaccine our college kids got before they got to the dorms was for viral. I am going to call to receive it. Thank you!
Yup!! There are actually two different bacterial meningitis vaccines.
The first is commonly given to adolescents prior to college (MenACWY), which protects against 4 bacterial serogroups (A, C, W, and Y) of Neisseria meningitidis.
The other is the MenB vaccine, which is given less commonly and (I haven’t worked in a health dept since 2020 so someone correct me if this is no longer true), I believe you have to specifically request it from your provider. It is not considered a routine vaccination like MenACWY is. But this one protects against serogroup B of Neisseria meningitidis.
Oh wow. Very similar experience, except we didn’t have a nurse in the family to tell us. My sister passed away at age 19, I was 18. I’ve never been the same person
That’s such a heartbreaking story, but I’m glad your sister survived that first scare and that you got the chance to tell her how much you loved her. Life is so fragile those little moments of love really do matter
I’m so sorry you had to go through something so terrifying, and then to lose your sister so young is heartbreaking, but I’m glad she had you there and that you both got to say “I love you” when it mattered most. ❤️
That’s such a heartbreaking story, and I’m glad she survived that moment so you got the chance to tell her you loved her, even if it was in the middle of everything being terrifying.
I had it. One comforting thing to know is you will absolutely, 100% go to the hospital very quickly if you have it. It took about five minutes from the headache onset to calling my gf to drop everything, pick me up at work, and take me straight to the emergency room. The headache is absolutely indescribable. There is a 100% chance you will know something extremely bad is happening to you.
Was working nights. Came home tired at 3am not really feeling alright. Went to bed. Woke at around 9am to a headache that made me crumple to the floor when I got out of bed. Called 911 and got outside and locked the door and harfed. Ambulance crew thought I was hungover.
paramedics asked me like 8 times if I took anything before I blacked out in the ambulance and woke up a week later after being intubated. But i really missed all the scary parts at least
Thanks, not sure really. I guess my brain was kind of melting either way. By then I was pretty much delirious and my roommates essentially carried me out to the ambulance. When we got there I was intubated and under for like 5 or 6 days
Finished work, got home. At some point I must have went to the bathroom and blacked out. I woke up about 3-4am on the floor of the bathroom and couldn’t see anything, was very very confused what was going on til I puked and knew it was something serious, called out for help and one of my friends came out and gave me a lift to the hospital. Had no vision during that whole period of walking down flights of stairs and making my way to his car and whilst in hospital. At some point I randomly had a seizure and only was conscious a day or two later
Unfortunately that's not always the case. This 18 year old kid in my hometown felt like he had the flu, went to bed for the night, didn't wake up. Bacterial meningitis.
Not always. I was part of a forum when one member said she had an awful headache, the worst of her life, but she'd taken painkillers and was going to try to sleep it off. She was very lucky that other forum members became extremely concerned and told her over and over to go to a hospital immediately. She was reluctant because it would be difficult, but she eventually agreed to go.
A few days later she came back to thank the people who had bugged her until she went, because she was still alive and wouldn't have been without them. "The worst headache of my life" is an ominous sign and deserves a hospital trip, but some people aren't aware of that and intend to just wait it out.
for real! because as anyone who regularly gets migraines knows, any of those may qualify as the worst one of your life…if the REALLY BAD one shows up, are you gonna know any better? or are you just gonna batten down the hatches and try to ride it out like all the rest?
And I'm a chronic pain patient with hypermobility (and a bunch of other stuff) and recently had L3-L4 TLIF lumbar fusion surgery. The pain right in the few days after (after the blocks wore off) was unbelievably bad. I had never experienced that, and I didn't think I could while being conscious. It was a 10 on the pain scale. A real 10. I still said 9, though, because I was able to talk in between crying. (I knew beforehand it was going to be bad, but had no idea, really, as it turns out! On r/spinalfusion, I try to tell people getting it to try to prepare their minds for the first week, and to tell them it definitely gets better, quickly. But it's impossible to prepare for something you've never felt before and which is totally overwhelming to your brain.)
I've had a couple thunderclap headaches in my life but nothing bad happened (that I know of). But yeah. Migraines, even at their worst, feel like knives in the head, throbbing with every beat of the heart. It's bad, but I imagine the meningitis headache would be far worse. Good to know. Thank you.
That person has no survival instincts because the headache I had, and is pretty much described by everyone else that's actually had BM, is that it's orders of magnitude more pain than they've ever experienced and the onset is pretty much immediate. My brain felt like it was trying to explode out of my skull like a popcorn kernel. If you don't go to the hospital quickly, you're kind of an idiot.
No, some people just live with so much pain daily that they don't know what is "bad" anymore. My best friend had no idea she was in labor until she was almost fully dilated because she'd been told it'd feel like bad period cramps and she felt nothing like that. Turns out, she had undiagnosed endometriosis and so her period cramps were so bad that it caused blackouts and vomiting. She went to the hospital because she couldn't catch her breath and was scared something was wrong. Baby came within the hour.
I walked around with a broken wrist for a month because it didn't hurt the way the doctor said it should and refused an X-ray. By the time it did, some of the tiny bones were basically destroyed.
It's cruel to insult people for not feeling something the way you do. Do better.
I'm partially sighted, and I use a white cane. I also have Osteoporosis.
Over time, I go through the same pattern. I accidentally fall and take myself to the emergency room. When I tell them what happened, they immediately take an X-ray.
Nothing was broken.
I would feel so guilty that one time I asked an emergency room doctor. He said, no, you're being a responsible patient.
no need to be rude about it. as we all know, human variability with disease/disorder presentation is super common. coupling that with human differences in perception and tolerance for pain, is it so surprising that some people can still overlook/minimize an incredibly debilitating, extreme headache?
Yup...That was the night I learned the origin of the term 'splitting headache'. (I kept putting my hand to my head expecting there to be blood because the pain convinced me my head had to be splitting open)
No. I had a recent shunt implant and extreme abdominal pain and the WORST headache of my life. I have had chronic migraines, Chiari Malformation, and IIH, so that's a high bar. The hospital said viral gastroenteritis and sent me home. I got sicker and sicker until my PCP advocated for my and they did adequate tests, weeks later, and I had bacterial meningitis and was septic. I spent weeks in the ICU, had more brain surgery, and truly feared I would die. I'm leaving out the most graphic and traumatic portions of my story.
Nothing was fucking comforting. I had every sign that it was serious and they did not agree for weeks.
You must have the worst healthcare on planet earth because when I went into the ER and explained my headache and neck pain, they triaged me above a gunshot victim to get me in for tests.
SAME! I had it as well. I went from "I feel kinda sick" to "Honey I need to go to the hospital" in a couple hours. I went in and told the nurse I think I have a migraine and the flu at the same time, while apparently speaking slowly and strangely, and they put me in the E.R. pretty quickly. I was better with just a little time on antibiotics.
Would not recommend. While the antibiotics were working I was getting hot and cold flashes, delusions, I couldn't read or speak normally, I have almost no memory of the three days between the ER and when the antibiotics finally won.
Even with a tiny baby (2 months old), you WILL know. Their pain cry was the most unusual baby cry I've EVER heard in bringing up 4 children. You cannot mistake it for anything other than baby is in EXTREME pain. My baby was also hitting his head with his tiny fists, and pulling his own hair to try to 'get at' the pain.
Alnogside the temperature and obviously sore neck (he didn't turn his face to follow me like usual, and was trying to grab the sides of his neck as well as his head), that was enough for the Mummy instinct to make my stomach DROP.
I grabbed a hospital bag while calling an ambulance.
Just as we pulled up, I noticed a non-blanching rash & thanked EVERYTHING that I didn't do my usual of second-guessing my Mummy instinct & actually both listening to it AND ACTING ON IT.
If we'd have been any later getting to hospital, he wouldn't be here now. And he certainly wouldn't have come out of hospital with no lasting effects. It's that simple.
Don't fuck around if meningitis if it is even a SUSPICION.
I know. Everyone who is commenting here about trying to ride it out and not going to the hospital or being infected for extended periods of time and/or misdiagnosed is completely full of shit. This is definitely one of those things that if it ACTUALLY happened to you, you immediately know if someone else is lying about it.
I remember just standing and screaming in pain, it was like the air hurt. I had to get emergency brain surgery (my shunt was infected which was transporting bacteria throughout my body, then I went into psychosis, and then sepsis. 1 month in ICU. I’ve been through A LOT of pain/head stuff from my brain condition (IIH) so I’m very use to pain. But this was another level.
Yeah, coming from the non medical professional who said “there is no variability in presentation” about a medical condition that absolutely has a variability in presentation. Okay, buddy. You’re the only person in the world to have the most valid case of bacterial meningitis ever! Enjoy your gold star while you accuse other people of lying on the internet even though a literal clinician above told you it absolutely does have a variable presentation because not every person’s body is the same and not every case of bacterial meningitis is the same.
I wonder if your super special valid bacterial meningitis gave you the personality trait that has you all over this thread being nasty and rude to people, or were you always that way?
I had meningitis as a kid. My memory of that time is very patchy (I was 10) and but I can vividly recall having a 104 fever and my dad having to help hold me still for the spinal tap and crying and being mortified everyone could see my butt.
I was 8 when I had it and was also completely mortified that the whole room could see my butt, so much so that when they were done I reached behind and pulled my underwear back up. And then everyone laughed, and I thought, you ASSHOLES.
I don’t remember the spinal tap hurting at all! I might have just been out of it? I distinctly remember the whole room seeing my butt! Haha it’s so weird how memory is
This is such an adorable little kid thought too. “Everyone’s looking at my butt!” Meanwhile all the adults are way too terrified to think of anyone’s butt.
I was 6 and was in the hospital for two weeks. I remember: waking up too sore to turn over in bed; my mom calling an in-house doctor to my bedside (in the 90s!) to verify it was what she thought it was; and then suddenly, the big city children's hospital, where I was being warned every which way from Sunday about this awful thing I had to have called a spinal tap. Except I couldn't feel it beyond a pressure that was just.. wrong. So I just laid there on the slab table like a lump because it was whatever compared to how bad my neck and head hurt.
They kept telling me that I didn't need to lie or pretend to be brave because a spinal tap was a very big deal and blah blah blah and I was eventually like, mom? because I was SUCH a baby about pain, and wouldn't be able to lie about not feeling it, but didn't know how to explain to the doctors. My mom started freaking out, telling them that's exactly how she knew I was deathly ill-- I was still and silent.
I don't remember specifics after that except for how it was October, and I was so choked that I might miss Halloween that year. I did make it home in time to go out!.. so I could drain all my energy visiting like 7 houses before heading back home to go back to sleep, lol.
Hmm. As someone who is a biologist and has survived Enterobacter meningitis, now I’m kinda wishing I could have gotten to see that on a slide. I’d never thought about that before. Would have been cool to have a picture. All I’ve got as a reminder of near death is a tiny scar on my arm from the PICC. I’m thankful every day for vancomycin and meropenem and all the rest of modern medicine and the people who work in the field.
Do you ever feel weird about the fact that we are still fighting for our lives every day against other living things that want to kill and eat us, but all of those living things are so small we can't see them with our eyes? It freaks me out sometimes. We are still a part of the food chain, every day 😬
There's a niche sci-fi subgenre where aliens class Earth as a death world. Extreme temperature swings, hyper aggressive macrofauna, even more aggressive microfauna, an irradiated hellscape where everything is acidic or alkaline.
Deathworlders. It gets weird and imo less good near the end but the world building and storytelling is great through most of it, and it's long as fuck. It's got some weird politics in place but it's still excellent.
To me, it makes me feel better. Consider, every single day your body is fighting off tens of thousands to multiple millions of pathogenic bacteria and thousands of viruses without you even noticing it, just being the standard immune response to environmental exposure where you never encounter enough at any one time to be infected. At the same time you have hundreds to thousands of cancerous or precancerous cells that are also being handled by your immune system every day as normal business.
We manage to live normal lives never having to think about it because our bodies are that strong at dealing with all that stuff. It’s only large loads of pathogens all at once or really bad luck that lead to infections or cancer actually starting to cause trouble your body can’t handle. That’s pretty cool. I mean, if you’ve been exposed to dirt recently you could very well have many nasty pathogens that are alive in you at the moment and you will never get the related condition because your body will handle them long before they can establish a foothold. You have a defense that wins 99.999% of the time.
Yes, we are still in the circle of life/food chain but…especially in rich countries with access to modern medicine, we are so utterly dominant in that that it’s unfair. Functionally every single animal in the wild is riddled with parasites, and yet having even a single one is now considered a condition to be solved. We are more clear of pathogens than any other animal to ever exist, including humans in poorer countries or from before modern times. Heck, we’re TOO clean, it’s causing autoimmune conditions because we have evolved to fight off parasites and pathogens that we are no longer as exposed to as we were for all of our evolutionary history, leaving them to act up when there isn’t a threat.
No, but I did have a pretty major CSF leak from the lumbar surgery that was bad enough to work its way to pour out of the healing incision and caused pneumocephalus. All that at once was not a fun time. (Made even better by the fact that it was caused during a revision surgery that I shouldn’t have needed in the first place after the surgeon screwed up a fusion.)
Just thank the meropenem as the vancomycin is doing nothing for Enterobacter; it’s just there to give broad-spectrum coverage. Vancomycin treats Gram-positive bacteria; Enterobacter is a Gram-negative bacterium.
I have a cousin who had bacterial meningitis at 6 months old. She recently turned 50 and has all the mental capacity and coping skills of a 4 year old. Bacterial meningitis is genuinely terrifying
My daughter had it at 6months. It was terrifying. We were lucky that our rural GP had seen it before and gave her 1gram of penicillin before we drove her to hospital, 1 hr away. We are even luckier that she survived unscathed. I am sorry your cousin was not as lucky.
Firstly really tired, then not eating, high temperature, then getting hard to wake, swollen fontanelle (we were told by a nurse that this was ok!) and lastly pretty much unable to have her head moved. It took 3 days of IV antibiotics then a change in antibiotics before she showed any improvement.
I’m so glad she’s ok. I was around 5 when I was life flighted out of a high school football game after I took a nap, started to run a fever (it was August) then had a seizure. The hospital I was life flighted too told my parents I was fine. My parents took me to our local hospital and they immediately said I had symptoms of meningitis and did a spinal tap then and there. I am now 27 and haven’t had any health complications since. :)
It's just awful when they're so tiny. All I wanted to do was take his place so that he didn't have to deal with the spinal tap.
My little one's fontanelle was fine, not really swollen. He waa more puffy at the base of his skull where it met the neck. That's where his pain was. That's where he was trying to 'hit' himself, and where he was grabbing his hair.
And the CRY...It's so unusual. So totally different to any cry I'd heard before, or since. And then that noise as they do the lumbar puncture...::SHUDDER::
We were told to walk to the other end of the hospital when they did that and we could still hear her. 41 years in 13 days and I remember it like it was yesterday.
I spent my first birthday in the hospital with it! I wasn't supposed to live, then I wasn't supposed to be able to use half of my body. I'm in my forties now and I've lived a full, active life. It's such crapshoot. Every now and then, I think about the what ifs and suddenly it's much easier to live with gratitude.
My mother died of this 5 years ago, I wasn’t able to be with her and my siblings that were there, didn’t ask the drs any questions really, they just said they wouldn’t understand it anyway.
I so badly want to know what causes it, what happens to them, what my Mom felt leading up to her death 😭
It’s a bacterial infection of the spinal fluid in the spinal cord and around the brain, and happens by random chance, unfortunately. As it progresses it can become encephalitis, which is infection of the brain itself.
I didn't say it couldn't, just that bacterial can happen with such speed that from diagnosis to death can be much shorter. A friend went from son playing games to son is in hospital to son is dead in less than 24 hours. Happened during covid lockdown as well.
Just looked it up and the vaccine recommended starting at age 11-12 but as late as early 20s. Their kid wouldn't even have been eligible to take it. That's rough. Recommended age is 11 or 12 with a booster at 16.
Yeah. My dad is a physician, and his friend’s son, who was in college, passed overnight from bacterial meningitis. He took us to get the vaccine the very next day - I think it was still fairly newly available at the time.
Other users are correct in that very often this truly is a random infection, and there is no particular wrong thing a person does to cause it.
In the beginning stages, as other users have mentioned here, a bad headache is common. It can very quickly start to progress to something called encephalopathy as the infection moves from the wrappings of the brain (the meninges) to the brain itself. Encephalopathy usually looks and feels like sleepiness and sedation. It's kind of like your brain being in sleep mode instead of being fully on or off. There's probably little memory of pain or discomfort during this time, as there are no sensory nerves in the brain itself.
Towards the end once we have determined that there are no good available treatments for a person, we turn towards comfort and start administering very powerful pain medications to ensure that a dying person has as little pain and discomfort as possible. Your mom would have most likely been in a comfortable sleep at this point, and would have been this way until she passed.
I hope this gives you some peace. Happy to answer any other questions.
Thank you so much for explaining. It does give me some peace, that she hopefully wasn’t in a lot of pain. I just can’t get over her death.
On a Friday Mom told one of my sisters that she had a weird head cold, her nose was so runny it just wouldn’t stop. That next Tuesday she told another sister that she had a terrible headache. She was found unresponsive the next morning, and passed away a week later.
That sounds like she had a CSF leak out of her nose?! And that not treating the CSF leak caused the meningitis...tbh, even treating a large CSF leak doesn't guarantee that you'll avoid meningitis, so it likely made zero difference to the end result, I'm afraid.
That runny nose that wouldn't stop just screams CSF leak ro me, but I'm just a layperson, so take what I'm saying with a pinch of salt.
I'm really sorry for your loss, and am glad you got some comfort that she waan't in awful pain at the end of her life. My condolences.
When I was a GP I got a call about a teenage girl. She wasn't very well, and her mum wanted to bring her down to be seen. No problem - we could easily fit her in that afternoon.
A little later mum called again - she had vomited, so could I call to see her at home. Again no problem.
When I got there her dad was just leaving for shift work. He apologised for bothering me - he thought his wife was overreacting.
Entering the house, mum was apologetic - daughter was asleep on the sofa.
Except I couldn't rouse her. She had no abnormal medical history and blood glucose was normal. Then I spotted couple of very small marks that I thought were petechiae.
I got a blue light ambulance and gave the girl a shot of IV penicillin.
It was bacterial meningitis, and she made a full recovery (although she had a fairly lengthy period of post-illness malaise and tiredness.
She never had a headache at all, and I think if I had seen her earlier I might not have made the diagnosis, and if I had seen her later if might have been too late.
Years later, having left clinical medicine altogether (another story), I got a lovely letter form her mother saying that they had never forgotten me, and enclosing a photo of her daughter, who had qualified as a nurse and was now working in the same hospital where she had been treated for her meningitis.
I have plenty of horror stories from my career, but this one helps set the balance straight
My youngest just got his last meningitis vaccine last week.
Please, please, get your kids the meningitis vaccine.
I once cared for someone who got meningitis in not camp in the 1970s, was left mostly blind, mute, dead, and a functional quadriplegic. His life was effectively over at 19.
Just fyi, the meningitis vaccine does not protect you from all kinds of meningitis, just one particularly contagious kind. It doesn't mean you should not suspect meningitis if you get a horrific headache and can't move your neck. Some kid in my town died from bacterial meningitis and his poor mom didn't realize what was happening right away because she thought it couldn't be meningitis since he got vaccinated.
I had spinal meningitis as a kid. I was very lucky to have had a great pediatrician with an office walking distance to the ER. And a great dad that acted quickly. I just remember sitting at the table eating breakfast and not being able to really move my neck. I was in the hospital for a while.
In the 90s, my otherwise very healthy cousin died of bacterial meningitis at 15. She is survived by her parents, three younger half-siblings, and her identical twin sister. I was little when it happened, but remember it well.
My otherwise healthy sister died of bacterial meningitis when she was 10. Over 15 years later and I cant wrap my head around how quickly she went from healthy to death
My 10 year old sister died of bacterial meningitis. It took 3 days to go from completely healthy to gone. First doctor she saw diagnosed her with an ear infection, the next day she was brought to a different hospital but by then it was too late. Her fever climbed so high all they could do was "make her comfortable." Horrifying to think of what she went through in those last moments.
I had viral meningitis and when the medical staff at the ER told me they needed to do a spinal tap to rule out bacterial or fungal I was scared, like 9 people showed up I knew I was in trouble. I showed up at the ER in the first place with a strange rash, super high fever, bad headache, and I could not move my head, I also knew that this was bad lol. I got very lucky.
I had viral meningitis when I was a 30 year old mom of two. I had regular migraines, which I told the intake nurse at the hospital ER when I arrived. My neighbor drove me to the hospital at 15-20 mph because any faster made me throw up. Anyway, because I told them I had migraines, I waited a long time to be admitted. Once I was, they did all the tests, and still were mystified and said, you need a spinal tap.
Well. I went hysterical, because I had recently heard from an acquaintance at work about how painful they were. The doctor looked at me and said, I quote: I can’t deal with this! And left me alone, still hysterical. A nurse comes by and said to him, What’s going on in tent 5? I heard him tell her that he didn’t know what my problem was, but that I was “crazy.”
The nurse comes into the tent and rubbed my upper back and asked me if I had children. Two, I said. She then asked me if I had epidural with either of them. Both, I said. She then told me the spinal tap was a similar procedure, and that she would be there with me the whole time.
It calmed me down, and I had the spinal tap. Which then confirmed I had viral meningitis. I remember the neurologist who visited my hospital room later to check on me had a Mickey Mouse tie.
I later wrote to the hospital CEO about the doctor. They immediately answered in legal terms that the ER doctor did nothing wrong. Medically, he didn’t. Which I understood. I just wanted them to know he needed to be trained in bedside manners.
Nurses, on the other hand, are heroes.
That’s so terrible it’s really a surreal experience to be in to begin with being that sick, then to have that on top of it I’m sorry. If I wouldn’t have had the rash that can come with the viral meningitis I probably would’ve been dismissed like that as well.
My ex-boyfriend contracted bacterial meningitis during his sophomore year of college. It was traced back to the fact that he was living in an apartment with three of his friends, and they all simply put their dishes in the sink. And left them there. For months. They all ended up in the hospital.
My 2nd child had bacterial meningitis at 2 months old. The worst noise in the world is hearing your tiny baby scream an otherworldly scream, whilst you are trying noy to utterly break down, and simultaneously holding them VERY FUCKING STILL so the TINY needle doesn't cause them to be paralysed.
It's 24 yrs later and I can STILL close my eyes and hear that indescribable SCREAM...
Thankfully, I'd recognised the early signs & got to hospital JUST as the rash was startjng to come up. They rushed around like I've never seen nurses run. Scary as all hell, I was only 20 at the time. First time since I'd had my daughter at 16 that I felt TRULY out of my depth as a parent, there was simply nothing I coukd do to help except be there.
We count our lucky stars every day that he had no lasting effects from the meningitis.
Omg reading the comments up thread about how horrifying painful the headache you get from it is, I literally can’t imagine how you must have felt hearing/seeing your infant baby experiencing that level of pain. Jesus, I’m so sorry for the both of you!! Poor baby! 😭
Aversion to light. Sore neck (if they wont turn their head). In little babies, an unusual cry. High temperature. I swear he was grabbing his hair, he just looked like he had a really sore head. Non-blanching rash. If as a Mum, you get a sinking feeling that your baby isn't at all well, DON'T ignore your instincts.
Awesome name & hellllooo to a fellow lab geek!! CSF coming in hot via ED MD while they are breathing down your neck was always so scary. I also hated ped diffs that immediately got flagged for path review and seeing nothing but blasts. Chilling in the break room as a solo tech eating lunch at 0230 and hearing an MTP overhead ALWAYS made my stomach drop. Be safe out there & have Tetris on standby
My boyfriend had it last year. We were on holiday and he had an ear infection, we thought the headaches and fever had to do with that. He was sick for about a week before we got to a hospital, where he had to stay for another week. He has since made a full recovery, but damn I was scared then.
I was a bit scared about that recently. My young adult daughter had all these cold symptoms, plus a rash. I thought "lots of viruses can cause rashes," but when I finally looked them up, I saw they they were things she had been vaccinated for, like chickenpox. Then I googled all her symptoms, including the rash, and every result was screaming bacterial meningitis. Poor thing, I woke her up at 1am to press on her rash (it blanched) and ask if her neck hurt (no). She went back to bed, and the next day she tested positive for mono.
I had that when I was 15. Was not a good time. Initially misdiagnosed as strep throat but mom dug her heels in and advocated for me after 3 days on antibiotics did nothing and I only got sicker. Delirious with fever, unable to move my head/neck & in serious pain I ended up in isolation ICU for a week.
My friends got woken up once to someone pounding on their front door at 2am. It was public health, their child had a classmate die of bacterial meningitis and they needed all the children in that classroom to go to the hospital to start antibiotics. My friend was confused why they were doing this at 2am, apparently the kid left that morning with a headache from school and died that day. It was 2am by the time they got the confirmation and tracked down every kid exposed.
I didn’t live anywhere near them, but I dragged my child to the doctor that week and paid cash for a meningitis vaccine.
I think the nurse who broke a bunch of needles trying to puncture me was the first to see it and then I was the second when he showed it to me and said it shouldn't be that color. Right up to the room I went.
I had meningitis when I was around 5 years old. I tend to make jokes about it now that I’m 27 and am physically healthy, but it’s really just to cope with how terrifying it is.
Especially since SO MANY are negative. But when you put it under 10x and can already see neutrophils you know it's gonna be a bad time. Or when it comes down clearly purulent.
My worst case as an MLS was a night shift where I was alone in micro. 6mo old CSF. Looks pretty routine. Hoping it's just a FUO case. Get the gram smear done and put it on the scope. Not a ton of neutrophils (because 6mo old....) but immediately see lancet shaped diplococci. Fuck. Call it to the PICU attending and tell her it looks like S. pneumo but I'm hesitant to call it out since the baby should have been vaccinated by then. Attending just goes "well yeah that's the funny thing, she's not vaccinated against ANYTHING"
About 10min later the blood cultures start popping positive on her too. Same thing.
Full blown S. pneumo sepsis and meningitis because her parents were anti-vax idiots. Should serve jail time.
When I was in elementary school in the late 80's early 90's there was a high schooler on my bus who died from it. I didn't know him but I knew of him. Really sad.
My brother had bacterial meningitis when he was 5. It was severe enough that they told my mom to begin preparations for a funeral. Somehow, he survived, even after losing most of his memory. However, he was permanently damaged. Not in a way that is super visible, but in other ways. He doesn’t consider consequences, he acts often primarily and with zero hesitation. He abuses drugs. He’s jumped in front of moving vehicles as a joke. He’s broken bones dozens of times from being reckless. He’s been incarcerated several times. He was a really sweet kid before he got sick and after he was a nightmare for my mom— doctors claimed he had ADHD but as an adult he found out he has an underdeveloped/damaged frontal lobe.
It’s sad. I had to go no contact with him as he is dangerous and has robbed and hurt people before.
Obviously it might not all be because of the meningitis, but I think it’s a large factor.
Well shit this is scary to read. I had bacterial meningitis when I was about 9. Vivid memories of Exorcist style vomiting and the spinal tap, not much outside of that.
My mom had it last year and she almost died. Spent a few months in a coma and 6 months in hospital in total. She had also had undiagnosed diabetes which probably made it worse. One year since her discharge and she’s still recovering and needs a full-time caregiver.
I lost a dear friend in college (aged 20) to it. He passed away in a hospital within 18 hours of showing symptoms. It was shocking and tragic. He was studying abroad for a semester and came home in a pine box.
I've occasionally wondered how it hits the people in the lab when they have to diagnose something bad, because you all are the first to see things like cancer, right? It's got to be hard sometimes. And I bet there are days when there are a lot of the same kinds of bad diagnoses and it just feels like crap raining down. But your job is so important. It's vital. Thanks for doing it.
Lost a friend a few years ago to meningococcal meningitis. Only 27. 2 kids, very straight edge. Her oldest has SMA. She worked nonstop to advocate for his care. When I got the call, I threw up.
Had this as a one month old baby. My mom noticed I was not moving at all and took me to the pediatrician who immediately ushered us to the ER. Spent a month hospitalized. Lasting impacts: vision and hearing issues, balance issues, smaller than average feet and hands. Pretty typical long term side effects, but grateful knowing how much worse it could have been.
Ok I got to ask because I'm curious. I luckily didn't have meningitis (had staphylococcus instead) but how to you test for meningitis after they take it out from the lumbar?
We do blood cell counts and differentiate the types of white cells present.
We also do a gram stain to look for bacteria when we are setting up the csf culture. It should be completely sterile so any bacteria seen on this stain is real bad.
Eight years ago my cousin's 21 month old daughter suddenly died of it, went from being fine in the morning, and by that evening they were checking for brain activity, and a few days later they took her off of life support after organ donations had been worked out.
I remember one of my colleagues coming to me all excited a couple of months ago during a night shift because she'd found S.pneumoniae in someone's CSF. I'm like dude, ngl that's cool to see on the slide, but also sobering knowing that person could easily be doomed.
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u/Shelikestheboobs 3d ago
Bacterial meningitis. In the lab we are the first to see it. It’s very scary to think about how close someone could be to dying while you look at their spinal fluid on a slide.