Viral & Bacteria Meningitis

Meningitis is the term for the inflammation of the membranes that cover the brain and spinal cord. It can take two forms, bacterial or viral. Viral meningitis, sometimes called aseptic meningitis, is an infection that causes inflammation of the layers surrounding the brain and spinal cord. Bacterial meningitis affects the same areas of the body but is caused by a bacterial infection. Both types can be fatal but bacterial meningitis is more likely to quickly become life-threatening due to septicaemia that usually accompanies this disease. No matter which type, being told that someone close to you has meningitis can cause a sense of panic and helplessness. However, when you are the parents of a 2 month old baby your feelings must surely be indescribable.

One such incident touched my life a couple of years ago when my little granddaughter became seriously ill, very quickly. One of the unfortunate things about meningitis is the speed with which it progresses, the speed with which it becomes an emergency situation. A patient can go from feeling generally unwell with headache, sore limbs and sickness, to unconscious within the space of an hour. With very young children it is doubly difficult to establish what the patient may be feeling and the danger is always there that a GP, being the usual first point of contact, will not think past the 'baby temperature/bug/earache syndrome.'

My grandchild's GP was on the ball. Using a simple colour coded tick check list it became obvious, with every tick in the orange line, that our baby girl was dangerously ill. The baby needed to be admitted to hospital - immediately.

In 2005 experts from the Meningitis Research Foundation analysed the care and treatment of some 400 child meningitis cases. One of the aims of the project was to establish factors that could be linked to any deaths amongst the patient sample. The bulk of these patients, children under 16 years of age, had been admitted to hospital via Accident and Emergency. Sadly, 143 of the children died. Yet for every child that succumbed to the disease 3 others in the sample group survived.

The quality of care within the first 24 hours of a patient being diagnosed with meningitis is crucial. My grandchild was fortunate. On admittance she was examined and treated by a paediatric led team. This can be important as junior A & E hospital doctors are often not supervised by consultants, or may be part of a medical team with little knowledge of paediatric emergency care. A young child with meningitis can quickly go in to shock and suffer organ damage. It becomes imperative that treatment is started as soon as possible, often with a cocktail of super-drugs, and that all details however minute are fully documented to allow potential complications to be picked up early.

My little granddaughter was a fortunate child. Despite it being late evening the hospital called in a (female) paediatrician to assess her. It must have been the end of a very long day for her because when she informed the baby's parents that meningitis was suspected, the baby's mother screamed - and the paediatrician burst in to tears.








Advice and support

Meningitis Trust
24-hour helpline: 0800 028 1828
Email: info@meningitis-trust.org
Website: www.meningitis-trust.org.uk

Every Where We Turn - We are a generation who is failing our elderly.

The newspapers and television are full of the dire care dished out to a generation of elderly who find themselves thrown on the will of the state at the end of their fruitful lives.

Day after day we hear stories of elderly refused operations or treatment due to age. Care home residents that are not fed properly, geriatric hospital patients unable to feed themselves suffering weight lose and even death. Incapable or afraid to speak up, not taken seriously when they do ask for help, these are just a few issues on a long and traumatic reading list of failures meted out to our elderly and infirm.

This constant battering of the senses is particularly traumatic if you yourself are caring for elderly relatives - as I am.

Both parents, in their 90's, have different health needs and have developed a strong aversion to care intervention from anyone but immediate family. My mother, suffering from inoperable aortic stenosis and heart failure, insists she watches the 6pm news, news at 9pm and for good measure the 10 o'clock news. The daily newspaper is her gospel and woe betide us if Jeremy Vine broadcasts a discussion on the lack of elderly care, she joins in with gusto to all who will listen.

My father is bewildered, not only with the news programmes which he finds hard to follow, but also with my mothers rants. He has vascular dementia - mid/end stage according to his GP, although my mother is unconvinced this is true. Having suffered with multiple TIA's we are now on a plateau of confusion that is both distressing but sometimes amusing.

I can understand their terror at the thought of being rushed to hospital - never to be fit to leave. I can understand their terror at the thought of assessment for a care home - social services mean separation, care homes mean bullying and a lonely death, all of this a certainty in their minds.

I'm seriously thinking of taking the plug of the television and blaming the dog's obsession with chewing wires. Or I could tell them the newspaper companies have all been closed down by the governement - they had all the journalists arrested. 

Trouble is, is it worth the stress this would cause, to me that is - you see, they can't get out unless I take them so I might have to remove my car wheels and lay the blame at someone making a quick buck to be made in the recession.