Seven people diagnosed with meningitis

One Tuesday morning in March, Ryan Kelley woke up exhausted with a sore throat, nausea and a high fever. The 22-year-old Eastern football player rarely gets sick, but on this day he could barely drag himself out of bed to vomit. Cold sweat drenched the sheets as he tossed and turned into the early evening, shrugging off his girlfriend's appeals to take him to see a doctor.

A few hours later, the headache began. "I don't know what a migraine feels like, but I think this is probably worse than a migraine," he said. "It felt like an elephant was walking on my head - like my head was about to pop off."

Finally, at around 2 a.m., Kelley agreed to go to the hospital. "I got up to use the restroom, vomited and that's when I passed out," he recalled.

His girlfriend called 911 and he was carried half-unconscious into the chilly Cheney darkness. "When I got into the ambulance, all I remember was telling them that it was cold. That's when I had my first seizure."

At the hospital, doctors diagnosed a feverish, unconscious Kelley with meningococcal meningitis, which is caused by a bacterium that lives in the nose and throat of otherwise healthy individuals.

According to the Eastern Health and Wellness Web site, about 1 percent of the population is susceptible to the bacteria. If exposed, these individuals can develop an infection of blood around the brain, leading to meningitis.

Seven people in the Spokane area, including Kelley, have been diagnosed with bacterial meningitis in the last three months, a number that alarms Spokane County health officials as typically only three to five cases of the disease are reported in a year.

Julie Graham, spokeswoman for the Spokane Regional Health District, said the cases since January are particularly puzzling because none of them appear to be related. "When we get a report of an illness like meningitis, we do an investigation of the people who are immediately surrounding the patient," said Graham. "We find out what the similarities are, if they have had contact with other people who have had meningitis, that kind of thing."

After doing laboratory testing to find out if the specific variety of meningitis is linked to others, health workers have discovered no similarities between any of the recent cases. "We don't have any reason to believe that there's any kind of an outbreak going on or that these are linked in any way. They're just random at this point," Graham said.

At the outset, symptoms of the disease usually include high fever, stiffness, nausea, vomiting, headaches and exhaustion. Graham warned that these symptoms come on fast and strong, as in Kelley's case. "If you're having a high fever or symptoms that progress very rapidly, where you're feeling kind of lousy in the morning but by the evening you feel horrible, something that moves that quickly needs to be taken seriously," she said.

Michelle Pingree, director of Health and Wellness at Eastern, said that students, the elderly and young children are at a higher risk for meningitis. The immune systems of children and older adults aren't as strong due to age, but students are also susceptible to the disease because they often don't eat well and don't get enough sleep, which serves to weaken the immune system.

She also said, however, that even those who have a strong immune system like Kelley may be vulnerable, particularly if they share common space with others. "It's a higher risk for people in communal living situations or a lot of people living under one roof," Pingree said.

Pingree encourages everyone to get immunized, especially students living in resident halls and in other close quarters. She said that Eastern will be sending out information on immunizations this summer and that in past years, the school has offered discount coupons for vaccinations at Safeway pharmacies.

Graham cautioned that being vaccinated isn't a bulletproof jacket, however. "The vaccine is definitely a good idea, but it doesn't cover all strains of the meningitis bacteria, so even if a person got vaccinated it's not 100 percent effective against all varieties of meningitis."

She said it's wise to avoid sharing things like cigarettes or drinks where saliva is passed from one person to another in order to safeguard against the disease.

Graham also advised students to pay attention to what their body is telling them. She remarked that if Kelley wouldn't have taken his symptoms as seriously, "it would have been a very, very different outcome."

Kelley has little recollection of the four days between Wednesday morning and Easter Sunday, when he regained full consciousness. From what doctors told him later, he said, he was incoherent and non-cooperative much of the time. "I was telling the doctors that I wasn't sick, that I needed to go because I had a final to study for." Kelley said bruises still mark his wrists from when the nurses had to tie him to the bed in an effort to stop him from leaving.

The doctors were concerned Kelley might have suffered brain damage when he failed to identify his own family and friends. "I looked at my mother and told her, 'you look like my mother,'" he said. "My girlfriend was right there by my side the entire time, and I didn't recognize her either."

Kelley was released after a week in the hospital, and he said the next week at home was a trail of "baby steps" as he dealt with light and sound sensitivity, very little appetite and severe fatigue. He lost almost 15 pounds and some of the hearing in his left ear, but he feels like he's en route to full recovery.

Currently in his senior year at Eastern, Kelley is back attending classes toward a major in communications and is attending physical therapy sessions to regain his strength.

Despite a lingering lethargy, he hopes to return to football this summer after he recovers more of his strength.

Now that he's been cured, he reflects on what could have been, if things had gone differently on that cold morning in March. "If it was a little bit later, just an hour later, I wouldn't have made it."

While Kelley never remembers hearing about meningitis before this, he said he's glad for the opportunity to talk to people about his experience.

"Awareness is low and I'd love for it to spread, especially around Eastern, because there are students here who may not have had the vaccination," he said.

"I would hate for this to happen to anyone and their families because they may not be as lucky as me."