by Lily Jette

Created on: August 02, 2008

Eternal Damage
Life after Meningitis

On a warm spring day in April, 2003, I received a phone call from a friend, inviting me to have lunch. Accepting the impromptu invite, I hopped in the car and met my friend at the restaurant. After we had been seated, we noticed the utensils weren't thoroughly clean. Disgusting as it might have been, this was not the first time I've had dirty utensils at a restaurant. Signaling to the waitress, my friend and I respectfully verbalized our disdain at having been given less-than-clean utensils. Apologetic, our waitress replaced our utensils with a set of clean ones. The rest of our lunch went off without a hitch.

A few short days later, upon my awakening, my neck felt very stiff, slightly painful, along with a severe headache. Assuming I had slept in a strange position during the night, I crawled out of bed, took a pain reliever and continued the beginning of my day. My neck pain continued throughout the day and felt even worse by evening. Turning in for the night, I grabbed my comfortable heating pad, positioned it between my neck and a pillow and tried to get some much needed sleep.

The following morning, I could not move my neck without excruciating pain. My schedule was full so, mustering up as much tolerance as I could manage, I clumsily rolled out of bed. The moment I attempted to stand, I knew something was wrong. Not only was my neck stiff, my head had begun to spin. Bracing myself against the walls in my bedroom, I made a struggling attempt to keep myself steady while shuffling into my hallway. Arriving just outside the door frame, a wave of nausea swept over me, so completely, I did not make it any further, instead, crumpling onto the hardwood floor, my stomach heaving violently. Finally, regaining composure, I slowly crawled my way to the bathroom to clean myself up, along with the floor. I made a hollow endeavor to crawl to and from the bathroom dragging towels, then throwing all of them into the bathtub. It would be hopeless to try to make it to the laundry room. Believing I had most likely caught a nasty bout of the flu, I scooted across my bedroom floor and back into bed.

After sleeping off and on all day, between bouts of wrenching regurgitation, I woke up in the middle of the night, soaking wet, severely vomiting with a fever of 103. Confusion had taken hold so, peeling off my soaked pajamas, my mind thinking anything but clearly, I strived to go back to sleep. What followed were unusually bizarre dreams, continued

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