ENCEPHALITIS CASES

Encephalitis Cases

June

My name is June and I live in a northern suburb of Perth Western Australia. I am coming up to my 51st birthday, married to the world's best husband (Allan) have 3 beautiful daughters all married to wonderful men and 7 lovely grandchildren. I was 50 when my Herpes Simplex Encephalitis started around Christmas 2002. I had my mum staying with myself & Allan over Christmas as it was her first Christmas without our darling Dad who had passed away in July.

I went back to work after my Christmas break on Thurs. 2nd Jan. 2003 and as soon as I got there at 8.15am I rang for an appt. with my doctor and it was booked for 11.00am, by 9.00am I started to feel very woozy so told my boss that I needed to go home, so he said that was fine & don't worry about coming back until Monday.

I decided to call into mum's as she was only 10 mins. away from the doctors so it was better I do that than go all the way home & then back again. Mum wasn't home but as I had keys for her unit I let myself in and then went really woozy again so layed on the floor and that is the last thing I remember. Apparently I got myself up & drove to the doctors and when I saw her I told her about my bladder infection and she had told me that it was a nasty one so if I felt any worse by the afternoon go to the local hospital. Apparently when I left there I called into the chemist and bought my antibiotics and got home and told Allan who was still on holidays. I then went to bed & slept soundly for 2 hours. When I woke up I told Allan that I needed to go to the hospital as I wasn't feeling very well. He took me up there and they put it done to the same thing so they put me on a drip with strong antibiotics and after 7 hours when the medication had finished they sent me home. When I woke up on Friday morning Allan told me that I was talking weirdly so he decided to take me back to the hospital. Luckily the doctor on duty that morning suspected what was happening so started me on the only antibiotic that helps with HSE. They then decided I needed to have an MRI but as it was late on Friday they don't do these on the weekend so they needed to transfer me to Sir Charles Gardner Hospital the next morning, this is our major public hospital.

I arrived there and was settled late Saturday afternoon and told Allan that they would do the MRI early Sunday morning 5th Jan. When he arrived that morning they were getting me ready for the MRI and that's when all hell broke loose. I started off with a few small fits and went into a large full blown seizure that I wasn't coming out of. They then put me into an induced coma and into intensive care unit. They then explained to Allan what was going on. Our eldest daughter lives in New South Wales which is on the other side of Western Australia so Allan rang her to let her know so she booked a flight over and arrived while I was still in ICU. Luckily I was only in ICU for 4 days.

I won't go on for much longer but I am still not back at work which is probably never going to change and my seizures have not been controlled as yet and my current memory is still bad although I am now going to Speech Pathology twice a week and I am really enjoying it knowing that I am not really as bad as I could have been.

Hope to hear from anyone else in "our strange world", thank you for reading this.

June
Perth, Western Australia

Posted: April 10, 2004

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