I Was A Healthy 19-Year-Old College Student. A Virus Almost Killed Me.

by Karen Svoboda

It was April 1990. A month before finals during my freshman year at college. I felt…wrong. More than a cold, it felt like my body was “off,” not horrible, just uncomfortable. My choice was do I push through and take the test I had after lunch, or do I go to the infirmary and use it as an excuse to skip the test?

I was lazy. I chose the infirmary. It saved my life.

I ended up going from a fever of 99 to 104 in about three hours. I took an ambulance to the hospital and was dismissed with aspirin.

The nurse at the college infirmary encouraged me to stay the night there rather than return to my dorm, and at about 4am, I woke up unable to breathe.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been unable to breathe, but it’s terrifying and incredibly painful. It felt as though there was a metal band around my ribs holding them tightly closed around my lungs.

I was again rushed to the hospital. The oxygen I was given in the ambulance allowed me to breathe, but the real pain was just beginning.

By that afternoon, I couldn’t move my head, my leg was swollen twice its size, and a small cut on my shin had erupted into an open wound.

Anything that touched my skin was painful. A nurse kept accidentally bumping my bed, and every small jarring nudge made me want to cry.

They did all the tests, and finally, they did a spinal tap. That was it. Bacterial meningitis.

My leg was so infected that I needed surgery and a drain installed to remove the infection under my kneecap.

I spent a month in the hospital, where I was unable to leave my bed at all. I had a bizarre spotted rash on my hands and feet, and my situation was so unique that photos of my hands were taken and included in a medical journal.

Everybody in my dorm, anyone in the infirmary, as well as my ambulance drivers, had to take medicine to prevent the disease from infecting and likely killing them.

Apparently, the pill turned their urine bright orange (my friends called it “orange crush pee”).

After I was finally let out of the hospital, I was quarantined in the state and could not return home. This meant that my summer vacation was spent in my college infirmary while my other friends were at summer jobs or internships or just living life.

I was in a wheelchair. I was given IV penicillin, which I eventually developed an allergy to, and to this day, I have to use penicillin alternatives when I have an infection.

I should have never lived to see 20. But by the grace of God and an amazing medical team (including the wonderful and kind nurses who kept me from being too lonely over the summer), I survived.

The moment my children could receive the meningitis vaccine, I made sure they got it.

Nobody, especially not a child, should have to suffer unnecessarily like that, and I will not put my children at risk over political ideology and fear-mongering that takes the place of science.

RFK Junior is a person without a conscience, and after more than a few children’s lives are lost, he will be remembered as such.