Mum shares five-month agonising battle with meningitis after thinking it was a tummy bug

LUCY DIXON called the NHS helpline over “a tummy bug” – then woke up a month later in hospital.

After collapsing at home, the single mum, 39, was rushed to intensive care with meningitis. Her recovery has been tough but with the love of son George, six, and the rest of her family, Lucy is battling to get back on track. The writer from Blundeston, Suffolk, tells her story.

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I opened my eyes and instantly shut them again. The fluorescent lights on the hospital ceiling sent shooting pains through my skull.

I could hear my mum’s voice and feel her hand grabbing mine.

I tried to ask where George was but couldn’t speak.

There was a tube down my throat attached to a ventilator helping me breathe and although I could squeeze Mum’s hand, I couldn’t move much else.

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My last memory was of calling 111 with a pounding headache, neck ache and sickness bug that wouldn’t shift. Now I thought I’d woken up in hell.

My GP had said it was flu. But I collapsed getting out of bed and was taken to hospital. I spent the next month in intensive care.

I’d had meningitis, leading to encephalitis and a neurological condition called transverse myelitis that damaged my spinal cord. The slightest movement was agony.

Those first few days, broken up by morphine-induced sleep, consisted mainly of panicking about my son but not being able to communicate my fears.

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I hadn’t really grasped that I was paralysed. I’d lay awake planning how I would demand to be discharged, not realising it would be another five months before I slept in my own bed.

Mum visited every day and moved into my house to look after my son.

I was in no fit state to see him at first. I was still in ICU and spent most of my time crying.

Mum put photos at the end of my bed. I’d stare at George’s picture, desperate to hold him and tell him I loved him — but with a sick feeling in my stomach that he’d be better off without me.

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I was later moved to an ordinary ward and George came to see me for the first time in more than a month. As soon as he skipped in I started crying, reassuring him they were happy tears.

He was shy at first and it broke my heart that I must have seemed like a stranger. I couldn’t tell him everything would be all right. I didn’t know.

His visits were bitter-sweet. I adored how he curled up in the hospital bed with me, but was so sad that I wasn’t the mum he was used to.

After another month I was transferred to a specialist neurological rehabilitation unit, which would be my home for the next three months.

The move made me realise I wouldn’t just wake up one day able to walk. I had a long journey ahead, with no guarantees. With my own room, at least I had some privacy. It was further from home, though, so I saw George just once a week.

He coped so well for so long but struggled when I moved hospitals and kept asking me if I was going to die. Not being there to comfort him was hideous.

After five months in hospital, I was disch-arged a few weeks ago. I cried my eyes out.

I no longer think George would be better off without me and it’s surprised me how well we have all adjusted.

It’s unlikely I will ever be back to how I was, but I can hobble about and George is brilliant at helping.

I suffer pangs of guilt that his child-hood has been altered but he seems rem-arkably chilled out.

What has it taught me? You don’t know what the future holds, so make the most of every moment. 7 Health is a gift.

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