Meningitis?

[java]

What the heck? 2 weeks ago an 8 year old boy died from Meningitis in the next town over. Last week a high schooler died at a local school. Now a high schooler on our block*a friend of my son's, is hospitalized. They are not saying meningitis yet but it sure sounds like it. High fever couldn't move led to the trip to the hospital 2 days ago. If you can keep him in your thoughts I would appreciate it.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

 

[Holly]

I hope he recovers quickly

 

[golfgal]

Scary. My aunt lost all of her hearing due to meningitis but it was VERY touch and go for a while too. It is nothing to mess around with. Prayers for the kids.

 

[DVCLiz]

Scary. My aunt lost all of her hearing due to meningitis but it was VERY touch and go for a while too. It is nothing to mess around with. Prayers for the kids.

How very sad. Thank God there is now a vaccine for this awful disease.

 

[njmom47]

So sad. I had meningitis which turned out to be the viral kind.
We recently lost a teenager in our area from this as well.

 

[laurie31]

What the heck? 2 weeks ago an 8 year old boy died from Meningitis in the next town over. Last week a high schooler died at a local school. Now a high schooler on our block*a friend of my son's, is hospitalized. They are not saying meningitis yet but it sure sounds like it. High fever couldn't move led to the trip to the hospital 2 days ago. If you can keep him in your thoughts I would appreciate it.

Prayers for the families.

How very sad. Thank God there is now a vaccine for this awful disease.

Meningitis is just a word to describe inflammation of the covering of the brain and spinal cord. (-itis = inflammation such as sinusitis = inflammation of sinuses). It can be caused by any number of bacteria or viruses.

There are vaccines against HIB and against some types of N. meningitidis and many types of Streptococcus pneumoniae.

However, any bacteria can infect the meninges, so while it's very important to get the available vaccines, and they do protect against the most common causative organisms, they aren't a guarantee that you won't get meningitis from some other organism.