At first i thought i had slept funny one night because i woke up with a really sore neck. On top of that I got a really bad headache and it didn't go away, no matter what i did. Then it progressed to a sore neck and a migraine and Panadine Forte wasn't even touching the sides. I had to ring my mum when Mat was at work to ask her to help me with Macy because I couldn't even handle having my eyes open let alone caring for Macy. I really did just think that I had done something to my neck and if i could fix that, my migraine would go away. But by the time my sister came over that afternoon she was worried and called my Dr who ended up arranging for us to go straight to the hospital.
They thought it was meningitis to start with however there were concerns that possibly it was cancer again because the reason my neck was so sore was because my lymphnodes in my neck were so swollen and inflamed. Because of this they called my oncologist up to the hospital and she was really worried, which of course made me really worried. I decided that as long as the results come back negative for further cancer, i could handle anything. Luckily, they came back negative.
Some doctors said that i probably got it because my immune system was still low but other doctors said that it should have been back to normal by then because it had been a few months so it was a bit of a mystery as to why i got it. I wonder if any other cancer patients get it after treatment though?
I had booked my reconstruction surgery in for the start of November but because of the meningitis my doctors decided that i wouldn't be fit enough to have it so it was postponned for a month. I was really upset at the time because i had prepared myself emotionally to have the surgery and then i was going to have to wait another month before i could have it. Luckily they did this though because it took me at least a month to get over the effects of the meningitis. It was hard because i really had just started to feel better each day and i even had some days where i wasn't needing to have a sleep through the day which was a big deal, but then once I got the meningitis i was knocked back down even harder.
I was in hospital for 8 days and because i couldn't stand the light or any noise I only asked Mat to bring Macy up once to see me. Once again we had to rely on the help of family and friends while i was in hospital and mat was trying to take care of me and macy at the same time. My family read up about the meningitis on the internet and they all said that they had to stop reading because it was that bad - 20% of people die from it. After all that i'd been through, we couldn't believe that meningitis may be the one to get me. I had one really bad night when my dad was sitting with me up in the hospital (god love him, he was wonderful through all my surgeries) and i looked at him and just told him that i wanted it to stop. I didn't want to keep fighting anymore, i'd had enough. My temperature was at 40 degrees, my blood pressure kept dropping right down, endone's weren't taking the pain away from my head and i couldn't open my eyes from the light. I'd been through enough and at that moment, it was all too much. If i had been given a chance to make it all stop then, i would have taken it. But I didn't have that option, so i just had to keep going and deal with it.
Because of all of the blood test and chemo etc that i'd had to have so far for my treatments, my veins were really bad and hard to access. I couldn't use my left arm because of the mastectomy so i only had one tiny vein in my right arm to use which was useless. I had to have a central line put in which was agonising! The worst experience i had gone through to date. They let me go home with the central line still in so that i could continue with the antibiotics for another week. So just like the mastectomy when i had the drains coming out of my chest, this time i had tubes out of my neck and antiobiotics going through my system 24/7.
I went through another bad stage for a few weeks when i got home and just before my reconstruction surgery. It was just like after the cancer treatment had finished and i had to let my mind catch up with what my body had just been through. It was scary to listen to my doctors tell me how close i came to dying and i didn't really know how to handle it. It was good that I had my reconstruction surgery booked in for December because I had until then to sort myself out, rest and get my energy back and prepare myself mentally for the biggest operation that i would ever go through.
To help with this Mat decided that we needed to get away. The meningitis had scarred the crap out of him as well, knowing we'd come so close to losing each other and I was upset because i had missed out on a lot of time with Macy again. So we went away for a few days to Cronulla which was just what we needed. Mat and I went through a really bad stage when i got home from the hospital. We had both had enough and we were both running on empty and neither of us had any reserves left so we took it out on each other. I was still sick so expected a lot from mat when it came to helping with Macy but he needed a rest from it all as well. Going away for a few days helped us to get away from everything and just spend some time together and it's just what we needed to help us get back on track.
My worst stage was after the radio finished but for mat through this whole experience, his was after the meningitis. We were arguing a lot because I was still sick and grumpy and we were both just so over it all! I had to tell Mat that i needed him to push through and be there for me and put up with me being sick for just a bit longer to get us through the next big operation and then once this next one is over, that's it, he'll have his wife back because up until then, he'd had close to a year without his wife really (as hard as it is to say).
Before I could go ahead with my reconstruction surgery I had to speak to another psychologist to ensure that she thought i was emotionally fit enough to go through with it. And to be honest i'm glad that I had to do that because Mat ended up coming into the session with me and we both got to vent about how hard it had all been and it helped us to get back onto the same page as each other. Mat was going through this process as well and although i was the one that had to put up with all of the sickness and the pain, he was still going through it just as much as i was emotionally.
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