I Beat the Odds!

For some reason everything I've looked up this evening leads to something about meningitis. Seriously. There's this three word phrase comic: http://www.threewordphrase.com/forsure.htm

An article about the shooting up at Johns Hopkins today (a terrible event) led to this article, http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-hs-meningitis-stevenson-20100915,0,6722783.story, which has this surprising statistic.

There have been 10 such cases so far this year of meningitis in Maryland, according to the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. There were 12 cases last year, but an annual average of 21 this decade.

Really? That few?

I looked up the population of Maryland in 2003 and found this:

In 2000, Maryland's population was 5296486, according to the federal census conducted every 10 years by the U.S. Census Bureau

http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/mdmanual/01glance/html/pop.html

which means the odds of me catching meningitis was less than 1 in 211,859.44. (I say less than because Maryland's population has been growing each year, so in 2003 there were more people, making it less likely for me to one of the chosen ones.

You'd think with those kinds of numbers I'd have at least won the lottery, which I should mention I did do in 2001. I won a thousand dollars matching six out of seven numbers in an online lottery that was free to play. My seventh number was one digit away; I think I had 14 and the number chosen was 13. Oh fickle fate.

So I've been at both ends of the spectrum, beating the odds for good and for bad.

In addition the intracranial hypertension I have hits something like one in 100,000 people and the blood clot I had when I was pregnant with Cam was millions to one, according to my doctor.

On the other hand a friend says I never have to worry about getting say breast cancer, because I never catch anything ordinary. It's all rare and odd diseases.

On a completely unrelated and hopefully lighter note, here's an article about how dinosaurs had sex. Apparently it was quite charming. Who knew? http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/639

Some scary science

I keep seeing this new commercial. I'm not even sure what it's for. I'm guessing a meningitis vaccine because it shows happy children touching and smooching while someone warns that they're going to get meningitis and die.

I have a lot of bitterness over my own bout of meningitis, mainly because I feel it was grossly mishandled. When I came into the hospital I saw a young lady who looked at my feet and shins and said she thought I had meningitis and that treatment should be started right away and everyone who came into contact with me should get prophylaxis. The older "wiser" doctor who was with her told her she needed to be thinking of common diseases, not something exotic. As a consequence it took several days of agony before I was diagnosed with the very disease she thought I had and my brain suffered extensively during that time.

As a point of fact meningitis can show up as petechiae, a kind of spotty rash, and is sometimes seen on the lower extremities. You can read a little about that here: http://www.bsac.org.uk/pyxis/CNS/Meningitis/Meningitis.htm

I was already in trouble because this was my second trip to the ER. They sent me home the first time and Chris brought me back because I was so ill.

Anyway, if treatment had been started sooner I might have ended up with permanent damage and disability. I was so sick that I couldn't even get out of bed to go the bathroom without help for a long time after and I have problems with activities of daily living even now, six years later.

So naturally I try not to think about meningitis much. The commercials annoy the hell out of me.

What with thinking about it more I was doing some more research and found this interesting article from Science Daily. Check this out:

"The vessels just start exploding," McGavern says. "This tells us that killer T cells recruit monocytes and neutrophils that actually produce the pathology we see with meningitis. What we thought were the cells responsible actually only recruit accomplices who commit the crime."

I don't know about you but I prefer that things in my head NOT explode.