Dealing With Spinal Meningitis

As I said in a previous blog post I was born healthy and normal. I walked at nine months and did all the things babies do at that age. Then, at 18 months I contracted spinal meningitis. When my parents noticed that I had a fever of 105, they were worried and immediately called our pediatrician and he did a spinal tap on me. His diagnosis was that I had spinal meningitis. With the high fever I also had seizures. I have been doing research on spinal meningitis and the symptoms that are found with the disease so that I can better understand it and then be able to write a blog about how the disease did or did not affect me. According to an article on spinal meningitis, it says "Spinal meningitis is an infection in the fluid around the spinal cord and brain. Most often, the body's immune system is able to contain and defeat an infection. But if the infection passes into the bloodstream and then into the cerebrospinal fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord, it can affect the nerves and travel to the brain and/or surrounding membranes, causing inflammation. The swelling that results can harm or destroy nerve cells and cause bleeding in the brain."I didn't have bleeding in my brain. However, I do know that my nerves were damaged so I think the bacterial infection must have passed into the cerebrospinal fluid surrounding my brain and spinal cord, as is the case with spinal meningitis patients. The article points out that this disease can result in brain damage, hearing and/or speech loss, blindness, or even death. God spared from all of these effects so that only the part of my brain that controls my nerves and muscles was damaged. I have a severe scoliosis and paralysis so I have to have contoured seating for my wheelchairs which supports me and enables me to sit up.

One of my uncles got spinal meningitis at age two and died. This was back in the late 1920s or early 30s when they didn’t have the medical advancements that they have discovered in my lifetime. When I reflect on this, I thank God I was born in the era I was and not earlier because they wouldn’t have had the lifesaving devices that we do now. In some ways I feel imprisoned within a crippled, useless body. Nothing works right and almost everything has to be done for me. Yet, I can (in a sense) escape the confines of my broken body with the use of technology like a computer and express my thoughts (scatterbrained as they are!) by typing. I am holding a pencil and using the only movement I have – the use of my right arm – to type this blog. If I had to write this by hand I wouldn’t even want to do it because it would take too much effort and too long to complete. So, thank God for computers. Computers are tremendous gifts for someone with my disability because you can do so much. I have written 5 to 10 page papers on a computer, used google and other websites for research, and then I play games online when I want to goof off. Goofing off is my favorite pastime! I like to be mentally challenged and one of my mental challenges was to create this blog. Seems like I conquered that challenge!