JAMES Patrice has said his life flashed before his eyes when he was in intensive care with meningitis.
The online sensation had bacterial meningitis and septicaemia just weeks before his 11th birthday.
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He recalled having a sick stomach the night before and spent the night between his parents’ room and the bathroom.
Hours later, his mother Veronica, known as Fron, saw a rash at 6am.
James said: “I wasn’t great and then Mum noticed red dots started to appear on my legs and in fairness to Mum she had seen the ads where you roll the tumbler, do they disappear?”
Fron and her husband Jim rushed and woke up a neighbour who was a doctor, who could tell straight away it was meningitis and told them if they drove to the hospital it would be quicker than an ambulance.
James, 32, recalled: “I remember being in the back seat half out of it, delirious.
‘HE MIGHTN’T MAKE IT’
“I got into the A&E into the reception area and I was walking in, but then I collapsed. Then I woke up and they were cutting the clothes off me, dad was beside me.
“It was like ER, you see it on Grey’s Anatomy, literally like that, cutting the clothes off me, ‘how many fingers are we holding up?’ In and out of consciousness.”
As he was contagious, he was put into a quarantined room and said he saw his family flash before him.
He said: “They say your life flashes before your eyes. It does. I remember seeing the back road up to our house, seeing mum, dad, Vanessa, the two grannies and then I woke up, I was in intensive care.
“I was out of the woods then. They said it was 48 hours where they said to mum and dad ‘he mightn’t make it.’”
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His mother stayed with him in Temple St for the ten days he was there, while Jim looked after his then 16-year-old sister Vanessa.
She told the Ready to be Real podcast: “I asked Mum and Dad out straight, ‘Is James going to survive basically?’ And them turning around and saying, ‘Yeah. He’s going to be fine. He’s going to be great.’”
James recalled hallucinating that he saw his sister but he thinks it was a way of bringing him back from the brink.
He broke down: “I do remember when I was in that room before I’d woken up, I saw Vanessa looking in and I remember afterwards I said to (her) and she wasn’t there. In my head, I’d seen her looking in at me and I’m still convinced it was like her saying ‘come on, come back.’”
‘THERE ARE BLURRED LINES WITH COVID’
Now healthy and older, James does some work with the Meningitis Research Foundation to get the message out about the disease.
He said: “I do a bit of work with the Research Foundation and they said unfortunately a lot of college students die from it because they think they’ve a hangover.
“So they could be away from home, they’re with their roommates, they could be after a night out and they’re like, ‘Oh I don’t feel great now, Jesus,’ and turn the lights off.
“And the roommates say, ‘Go in and sleep it off, you’ll be fine,’ and then they just die in their sleep. It’s scary.”
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And he said while there was little information when he was young, there still needs to be a lot more now.
He added: “Unfortunately I don’t think there’s a lot still now. I do see the research foundation tweeting the odd time saying ‘Covid and meningitis quite blurred lines. Keep an eye.’
“Keep an eye for the sensitivity to light, the spots appearing. I remember they said to Mum, ‘Jesus Veronica if you’d waited a few more hours- gone.’”