IT HAPPENED TO ME:Meningitis and septicaemia: the facts Getting meningitis late in life gave Michael Kennyand his family a terrible shock.
IT STARTED on a Sunday evening in August. I got a slight headache, nothing too bad.
As the night progressed it got worse and I took painkillers. By the next morning it was terrible. My wife, Claire, took me to casualty in Mullingar Hospital.
They did some tests and put it down to sinusitis - I had had a sinus operation the previous year.
My headache was getting worse and worse and at 11am I was admitted to hospital and given a bed. For the next few hours I was overcome with unbelievable pain.
My father-in-law, Richard, was with me. He put a cold towel on my head, which would relieve the pain for only a few seconds.
At 1pm it was decided to give me a brain scan. I remember coming out of the scanner and the nurse thanking me for being so calm. I don't remember anything after that until the next Friday - four days later.
Later I learned that the brain scan was inconclusive because my brain was so swollen.
I am told that I became so agitated that they couldn't do a lumbar puncture and my arms had to be tied to the bed. My head was swelling a lot at that stage. The doctors were giving me a lot of different antibiotics.
At 7pm that evening, Dr Murphy in Mullingar Hospital pulled my wife aside and asked my wife about the whereabouts of our family. She was told to get them to the hospital as soon as possible because he didn't think I would see midnight given the pressure my brain was under.
My daughter Claire Anne and son Richard were living locally. Two of my sons, Michael and Gordon, were in the Isle of Man and they were sent for. Another son, Dermot, was in the US and it was felt that he wouldn't make it in time. My brothers and sisters and mother and father-in-law also came.
Moving me to Dublin was not an option. Dr Murphy reckoned I would make it only a mile down the road.
They did tests after tests, but were very puzzled. I had recently been in Turkey and they wondered if it was something I had picked up in the pool. I work for the Office of Public Works and they wondered whether it was caused by a spray with which I had come into contact.
They kept searching for a rash but there was none. Later Dr Murphy reckoned that the rash had developed on the brain itself.
The next day, Tuesday, at around 2pm when blood tests came back they knew it was meningococcal meningitis. My wife tells me that my head was so swollen she couldn't see my eyes and all my limbs were swollen. I was unrecognisable.
I don't remember any of this. It was my family and friends who went through all the distress. A nurse told my wife to keep talking to me. On Thursday at around 8pm I opened my eyes and looked around. My wife asked me who she was and I was able to answer.
I don't remember that. However, I do remember waking up in a lift the following day when I was being moved from the intensive care unit down to another ward, because intensive care was so crowded.
The next few days are a bit sketchy for me, but the following Monday I was much more aware of what was going on. After that my recovery flew. The doctors were terribly impressed with how quickly I came out of it.
I had lots of aches and pains and found it hard to walk because my balance was bad.
I was discharged the following Friday - 11 days after I went to hospital. My wife, family, neighbours and friends were absolutely brilliant helping me get back together.
Even though it was six years ago, I have some after effects. I get a lot of tension in my head and I am on mild anti-depressants for that. I have learned to live with it.
Since then I have got arthritis in my hip and back. I've been told that the meningitis would have hurried on the onset of arthritis. I had an operation on my back last July and I am due to have a hip replacement once the back settles down.
I returned to work four months after the meningitis, but I wasn't feeling too well so I had to take another three months off.
My colleagues at work were brilliant about the whole thing. I went back to work again and worked until I took early retirement at the end of 2006. This was mostly due to the arthritis.
My only worry is that because all my organs were under such terrible pressure while I was sick some of them might have been damaged. I get a check-up every year and everything is normal.
I am 59 years old now and am really enjoying retirement. I spend a lot of time in the garden and my wife and I go out and about.
Meningitis is a very serious disease and lots of people are not as lucky as me. It is highly unusual for someone my age to get meningitis.
Going through something like that and coming out the other side gives you a different perspective on life.
• If you have had an experience with an illness and the health service - good or bad - e-mail the HealthSupplement at healthsupplement@irish-times.ie
MENINGITIS AND SCEPTICAEMIA: THE FACTS
Contracting meningococcal meningitis in your 50s is very unusual, according to Patricia Kohler from the Meningitis Research Foundation.
"Meningitis and septicaemia affect about 300 people every year in the Republic, and although anyone can get the disease, babies, children and young adults are most at risk," she says.
No other disease kills faster - a healthy person could die in hours - and one in 10 people who get meningitis and septicaemia will die and many more are left with disabilities.
While vaccines offer excellent protection, they are not yet available for all forms, specifically group B, which the Meningitis Research Foundation says has caused up to 83 per cent of cases in Ireland.
A vaccine for the group C form of the disease has been available in Ireland since 2000.
Since then this strain of the disease has declined dramatically, according to the foundation.
Meningitis is an inflammation of the lining around the brain and spinal cord and is usually bacterial or viral.
Septicaemia is the blood poisoning form of the disease.
Meningitis and septicaemia can be caused by many different infections, but most cases of bacterial meningitis in Ireland are caused by meningococcal disease.
For information phone the freefone 24-hour helpline on 1800 4133444 or log onto www.meningitis.org