Meningitis case study

by CHARLOTTE DOVEY, Daily Mail

Russell King, 27, from Stevenage, Herts, contracted the B strain of meningitis with septicaemia at 18.

He says: A couple of days before Christmas 1993, when I came back from my first term at university, I started to feel cold all the time and my neck ached.

The next morning my throat was sore and my neck was worse, so my father took me to the GP and I was given an antibiotic.

The next morning, I started being sick every 15 minutes and my head, arms and legs really ached. Then I started to develop a sensitivity to light so my parents called out a doctor.

Mum suggested meningitis, but the doctor dismissed it, and gave me an antibiotic.

The next day, my parents called an ambulance. I'd lost all coordination and was starting to hallucinate.

At hospital, red spots appeared all over my body - literally in front of their eyes. That was the septicaemia (blood poisoning). The doctors said if my parents had brought me in any later I'd have been dead.

I spent 12 days in hospital and was given penicillin six times a day. I couldn't return to university for two months and I took a year to recover fully.

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