Vaccinate or risk meningitis, urges teen

1st December 2005

By Paul Dykes

Teenage musician Hannah Fryett thought she would die when meningitis struck her down - but after six days in hospital she's now singing loudly from the same song sheet as the meningococcal B vaccination team.

The 18-year-old, clean-living, middle-class woman's life was almost taken from her by the bacterial virus that knows no social boundaries.

"They asked me if I had kissed anyone, or shared a drink, but I hadn't," she told the Bay of Plenty Times from her Tauriko home.

"I've always been real cautious.

"I was pretty lucky," having made a full recovery.

"But you have to get vaccinated - the risk is too high.

"You can do everything right, and still get it."

.She has spoken out after the Bay of Plenty Times revealed last Saturday that a large number of European parents are thought to have refused to get their school-aged children vaccinated, believing they weren't at risk.

Western Bay vaccination figures were amongst the lowest in New Zealand.

A music student with a year to go in a Bachelor of Media Arts course at Waikato Polytech, Hannah says a lot of her fellow students initially recited all the myths about the vaccine, saying things like 'you don't know what's in it'.

"I just say the risk is higher than the risk of not being vaccinated. I've now got most of my class vaccinated."

The drama started for the Fryett family when Hannah, now 19, came home from her casual work in June last year saying she was not feeling well.

After becoming alarmed at his daughter's high temperature, her dad Bob took her to the emergency doctor in 10th Ave later that night.

The doctor said she couldn't return home in that condition, and sent her to Tauranga Hospital, where the medical staff were equally concerned.

No one was able to pinpoint the cause, however, but after a nurse did the glass test on a rash - by pressing a glass tumbler firmly against the rash and seeing it did not fade or change colour - she decided to treat it as if it was meningitis, even though it wasn't confirmed.

Blood samples were taken to make cultures and Hannah spent the next six nights in hospital - her worried family at her side.

"One of my brothers stayed with me all night by the bed, he was so scared," she said.

"About three days into it, the doctors said the cultures proved it was definitely meningitis and that if the nurse hadn't started treating me with antibiotics that first night, I would be dead by now."

Mum Colleen cringes when she thinks back to that first night.

"I've got five kids, I suppose you get a bit blase. I was very busy and I went out that night. Hannah had a headache, high fever and was kind of shaking.

"I told her father to keep an eye on her and to take her to the doctors if she didn't improve - so we wouldn't be worrying all night. He texted me later to say she was in hospital."

The medics at the emergency department weren't sure what was troubling Hannah and had even suggested the family take her home for observation.

"I said no - her temperature was way up. Someone noticed the rash, and called the nurse back ... "

She said no one actually said her daughter had meningitis.

"You think is she going to die, it was scary and it was just bit by bit that she started to get better.

"That nurse who put antibiotics into her that first night, just in case, saved her life.

"We've been very fortunate, very lucky."