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Soazig

-15 years old and go first year at high school

-meningitis B and sepsis

It is a rainy day in Brittany, west coast in France. I arrive at school on Monday morning tired as you can often feel a Monday. My school neighbor also feels tired after the boat trip he takes every Monday morning from the Island Belle-Ile to the continent, the seas was especially bad that morning.

The day passes and I feel more and more tired and consider going home at lunch as I start to have a thorn through. However I have a history exam in the afternoon, which I want to pass. During the exam I start to feel dizzy and struggle to concentrate. After the exam I go to the school nursery as I feel I have no energy and there I also meet my school neighbor who is also feeling sick. Finally I regain energy and decide to take the one-hour buss trip home.

Once home I go directly to bed and close shutters as the light disturbs me. Towards the night I feel worse and make nightmares and my parents call the doctor who come home at the middle of the night. He is suspicious about meningitis but looks despite all quite good. So I feel secure and manage to sleep. The morning when I wake up my body is so stiff but I think it is the two-day stiffness after the gymnastic training I had over the weekend. I remember how hard it was to just make a move in the bed. Despite stiffness and illness I look good.

Around lunchtime arrives an ambulance, the doctor examines me and sees red prickles in the body and they bring me urgently to the hospital. In the ambulance I am very sick and the nurse keeps me alive by shouting not to sleep and to fight, I believe it has helped me to put my body in a fighting mode. Arriving at the hospital everything went so fast, test taken to find out I have bacterial meningitis B with sepsis. The medical staff at hospital chubert in Vannes did an amazing job as my chance to survive was very low and I recovered without any side effect.

The reason ambulance arrived is thanks to the school. My school neighbor got meningitis and school informed my parents to act quickly. If I would have stayed another hour or two at home I may not have survived. With meningitis you need to act so quickly. 30 years later when I heard the story of Mathias Bennborn I was in Brittany on vacation with my family. I felt so sad and angry, 30 years passed and so little has happened, most of parents do not know the disease and as parent I was not aware there are vaccines towards most meningitis gems.

Soazig Hamon Lindestam

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