The Complexities of Meningitis and Vaccinations
When my half sister was around 8 she got meningitis. She lived on the West Coast and I was in my first year of high school in Ontario. It is safe to say I really didn't have direct connection with her illness. But she spent the next two years of her life in and out of BC Children's Hospital, with her longest stretch being around 3 months. As the years past, when the subject would come up, people would ask me if she had had viral or bacterial meningitis. I said I don't know -"...but it was the really dangerous kind". I knew she had come close to death a few times, so I thought it was a reasonable assumption. Frankly I had no idea how complex meningitis can be. Just after I was invited to attend a round table for World Meningitis Day, and how the use of vaccines can help protect our kids, I happen to be visiting my family. So I asked what kind of meningitis my sister had had. And my overly simplistic view of meningitis completely changed. My sister had viral menin...
