MUM HAS BM MENINGITIS WITH SEPTICAEMIA :(

[rmacey]

My 57yr old mum has BM MENINGTIS with septicaemia.

Saturday she started complaining of earache, Sunday morning she started feeling week, violently sick at 2pm she went to bed by 4.30pm she had no vision or speech. She couldn't walk. We genuinely thought she had bad ear infection or mini stroke so did paramedics. Within an hour she was rushed into theatre yo have lumbar puncture, be put on life support machine as she couldn't support her own airways and had gone unconscious. 4 days later she came out of the coma. Today day 5 she is sitting up eating food drinking etc. Which is a miracle she's gone from most critical patient in the hospital to stable. BUT she is severely hallucinating. She is very confused about events etc etc. We have also noticed hand to mouth action with a spoon is not very good. It's heartbreaking to see. Dr's have told us its the toxins from the meningtis that is doing this to her. Her white blood count is very high but is slowly but surely coming down. No Dr is talking about how long all this takes staying in hospital, waiting for antibiotics to work etc. Has anybody experiences similar and could help us understand this whole process xx

[StrawberryCream]

Hi. What has happened to Your mum has similarities to what happened to me. I had BM & S at a similar age and I am told, because I don't remember, that I started complaining of an earache and then over the next few hours being violently sick, high temperature, excruciating headaches etc etc. By the time an ambulance came for me I was already going into a coma with a GCS of 5. In a&e I was sedated and ventilated to keep me in a coma so my body could fight the meningitis. I also had frontal lobe abscesses, cerebritis and strokes. I was in a coma for 3 weeks as any attempts to bring me out of the coma was unsuccessful. I was not expected to survive and if I did to be severely mentally and physically handicapped. The problems you are describing that your mum is experiencing is to be expected because it is only day 5. BM is far more serious and life threatening and her recovery is not going to take a few days like colds and flu. I was confused when I came out of the coma and for quite sometime, I was weak and couldn't walk and had a marked tremor of my hands when I was allowed to start to eat. Her recovery will go beyond her time in hospital and will take months. She will easily be fatigued and need to sleep a lot and initially every little thing she does will exhaust her and she will need lots of rest. Once she doesn't need the intravenous antibiotics anymore because the infection has been treated and resolved her recovery will continue at home. Some of the drugs maybe making her hallucinate but she will most probably be rather confused for a while. Take each day as it comes, notice the very small improvements and gradually you will realise how she has progressed. Not even the Drs can tell you how long her recovery will take as it is different for each of us.

Have you rung the Meningitis Helpline because they are very supportive and have lots of info they will send you and there are other services that they offer that maybe helpful to you and your mum as well.

Very best wishes to you and your mum x

[sdjohnson231]

Hi, RMacey. I am sorry to hear about your mother's bout with bacterial meningitis. Fortunately, she has come out of the coma. Her resulting symptoms sound like what I experienced. I am 56 and went through a similar situation in March of this year. I had the hallucinations for several days. If the doctors have not already done so, they may want her to have a brain MRI. It was discovered during mine that I had an abscess on my left frontal lobe. The pressure from the abscess on my brain caused me to have problems with motor control and speech (hard to feed myself, etc.). I think anytime you lose consciousness, it is a struggle to try to understand what has happened and why. My short term memory was destroyed. I was in the hospital for 13 days, on iv antibiotics for 12 more weeks after I got home. I finally returned to work in late August, almost 6 months after diagnosis. I'm lucky that I could return. I still want/need to sleep (to rest my brain) for 10 to 12 hours a day. Hard to do while working full-time. Your mother has a long road ahead of her, but it sounds like she is making tiny steps in the right direction. She will probably continue to have headaches off and on for quite some time as well. Her balance and her vision could continue to give her problems. The best thing you can do for her is to reassure her. Continue to answer her questions and be patient with her. Some of us make full recoveries, some still deal with a variety of symptoms on a daily basis. It's a new way of life that we are forced to learn and live with. Best wishes to your mother and your family. Give her a big hug and tell her how much you love her!

[Samanthamaryjane]

Hi. How is your mum now? Your story sounds exactly the same as what happened to my mum last boxing day. It really is a horrendous time. My mum had hallucinations for about a week or so and I was so worried she would never be the same again. She was in hospital 12 weeks as they discovered she had no spleen so took a long time to fight the infection but she got there. Now she has been diagnosed with lupus. Apart from some trouble with her arm and foot thankfully she is back to normal. We are so thankful she is still with us. I wish you all the best x

[rmacey]

Hi

My mum is ok. She was on life support for 3 days. Within the 7days she was in itu she deleloped cdiph. It was horendous she spent 2 weeks in isolation in a cubicle on the ward with diarrhea. She is thankfully home know but had been told she can re-develop it wiyhin the next 10 weeks. Her blood pressure is very high so she's on medication for that. For past week she has had horrendous sickness she's not sure the reason of that. They have told her she still needs another 4 months off work and she needs to go straight to gp if she ever gets a temperature/ear infection. Over all weakness seems an issue and she gets so tired doing the simplest of things which is killing her as she's such an active lady. Going to be a long road to recovery :(.

It's awful to go through it as a family and has knocked us for six tbh. But as u say glad she's still here with us as we very nearly lost her xx