Quote Originally Posted by KestrelBike View Post
Did you have the blotches/rash on the lower half of your abdomen? Severe photosensitivity? Also, did you wake up with these symptoms in the morning, or did they develop later in the day? Just curious; a former classmate who had been a good friend died of bacterial meningitis many years ago, and those were his symptoms.
Severe photosensitivity, unable to control emotions (difficult to explain that one but imagine trying to talk to someone and crying for a few words in the middle of a sentence and then stopping crying but continuing with the sentence - doc said that was normal given a brain infection). Don't recall any blotches but I don't remember much of what happened over the course of the four days I was in the hospital. Symptoms started in the morning and progressed throughout the day to the point where I couldn't even stand up on my own by the time my wife got home at 5:00PM. The bugger of it all is that they never did isolate the specific type of meningitis. The ER doc said my spinal fluid was the consistency of cottage cheese and my neurologist said the spinal tap revealed it was bacterial but couldn't understand why it didn't get worse since all they did in the hospital was give me antibiotics and fluids. My family doc said he thought it was West Nile but the tests (he did them several times) came back negative for it (negative as well for equine flu, avian flu and a host of others I've long since forgotten).

I'm sorry to hear you lost a good friend over that disease.