Amputee treated at QVH to raise awareness about meningitis
Diana Mann, 25, contracted Group B Meningococcal Septicaemia in November last year, and within a day was in intensive care in Kent and Sussex Hospital.
Though staff there were able to save her life, such was the virulence of the disease that specialists at East Grinstead's Queen Victoria Hospital were forced to amputate both her legs below the knee, her right hand, and the finger tips on her left hand.
She said: "I remember before I was ill I was vaguely aware of meningitis but all I really knew was that if you got the funny little rash that meant you had it and should be rushed to hospital.
"Actually there are other symptoms before that and by the time you have the rash it is often too late, so the more people who know about it the better."
Miss Mann, from Tidebrook, East Sussex, described how she felt ill while at work on a Friday and so went home, but because it was in the evening, she merely tried to sleep it off.
She was rushed to hospital on Saturday morning.
"I was very close to death, and it was only because of the treatment I had that I survived," she said.
Alongside the amputations, which have led to Miss Man needing prosthetic limbs, she also developed epilepsy and Myoclonic jerks, which cause her muscles to spasm uncontrollably.
Meningitis Awareness Week, which begins on Monday (September 15), is designed to alert people to the dangers and signs of Meningitis.
Every day nine people become ill with meningitis, resulting in a death almost every day and a further two people are left with effects as severe as brain damage, deafness and multiple amputations.
Symptoms of meningitis include a severe headache, a stiff neck, aversion to bright lights, a fever and vomiting, drowsiness, a rash and seizures.
Septicaemia, which is a poisoning of the blood and can be caused by meningitis bacteria, results in symptoms such as a rash, a fever or vomiting, cold hands and feet and shivering, limb, joint and muscle pain, abdominal pain sometimes accompanied by diarrhoea, pale or mottled skin, rapid or unusual breathing and drowsiness
Call Meningitis Research Foundation's 24 hour helpline on 0808 800 3344 for a free B Aware symptoms information pack.
Diana Man, a meningitis sufferer last year who was so badly affected she had to have both legs amputated. She is now working with an awareness group to raise awareness of the condittion. Courier photo GF909083/4
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