The next day you are found aspirating on your own vomit with decorticate posturing and right gaze preference. Shortly afterwards EMS intubates you and your are on a vent in the ER. Your blood work is horrible (renal failure and white blood count over 20K). You might think you are lucky that your head CT is OK, but no, you are not. You have trouble maintaining your blood pressure without Levophed and your pupils are only sluggishly reactive. You get contorted into a foetal position for a lumbar puncture (luckily you have no idea what is going on) and nearly spray frankly purulent cerebrospinal fluid into the face of the doctor doing the tap. Your CSF shows 160,000 WBC’s and a glucose of 2. The gram stain shows gram negative cocci. Everyone panics in the ER and many people are now getting a dose of Cipro to prevent getting what you have.
From what I hear, you sound like a nice guy. It is very sad, but you are going to die – people will miss you.
…yet another reason to ALWAYS kiss those you love goodbye, and remind them how special and dear they are. No one ever knows when they lock their door behind them in the morning that they will ever return.
Damn, isn’t it amazing how things can change on a dime? Well done thorough workup that unfortunately gave you the morbid diagnosis. My bet is there will be about twenty patients in your ER in the next few days with low grade fever and neck pain! Well done.
When the girls hear me yell “FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!” they know I’ve had a case like this.
Damn that really sucks
My ex had some form of meningitis. I found him on the floor unconscious. They closed the whole university down. Glad it wasnt that kind.
How awful for that guy.
I’m with Pattie on this one.
So very sad.
Makes me question the “delayed” part of the “delayed gratification” path I am currently on.
Hi ERP,
Im not in medicine but I’ve been reading your blog forever now! Love it! Anyways, this made me so curious, did he in fact have meningitis? Sad story….
Yeah, the gram stain was positive for a very, very nasty bacteria.
Dang what a tragedy. Read this earlier today and it’s been on my mind on and off throughout my day while at work.
We just don’t know when it’s our time. A few years ago, one of the secretaries went to lunch and returned with a horrible headache. She had been complaining of a headache throughout the day but after lunch, it was unbearable for her. She finally had to leave because her headache was so bad. She never made it home. On her way to her car, she passed out and died shortly due to an aneurysm. She was 35 years old with 3 kids.
Now is the time to appreciate our loved ones and our lives, friends and co-workers.
Been there, done that. It was 1960 and I was two years old. When I got to the Hospital, I had an 106 DEG. F fever. I still remember five people holding me so the doc could do the LP. Two weeks and much Streptomycin
later I was fine; except for the auditory nerve deafness
which left me with a moderate to sever hearing loss.
I quess today the proper response today would be to sue the doctor; me I am happy to have survived.
Not necessarily. I shook hands with that guy a few weeks ago. He has some neuro defecits, but he’s living at home. THe only difference between your story and his story is he wasn’t posturing. But on admit to the ICU, including the purulent LP, everything else was identical. And two months later, he walked up to me. I cried.
Wow. That story really stopped me in my tracks. I pray for his family.
While I am becoming accustomed to bad things happening to people younger than me, I have been seeing more meningitis in people only a little younger than me, rather than half my age. Not that either one is good.
Can you explain why that happened with the cerebrospinal fluid? I’m very curious. Thanks Doc
It was frankly purulent. Full of pus, and it came out under high pressure. Bacterial Meningitis will do that.