My Little Cousin Has Meningitis

Hey there. Yesterday, I was told that my little cousin was in the hospital. From the Email that my mother sent me, she has been there since Monday evening. It has to be one of the most weirdest illnesses that I have ever seen or heard of. My mother described my cousin's behavior like that of Linda Blair in The Exorcist. My cousin, 5 years old, was thrashing about, yelling obscenities at everyone, and started biting anyone that tried to calm her. At first, her mother thought that it was a tantrum, but when the little one started having "seizure like" movements, she was admitted to the hospital.

Last night, my wife and I went to go visit her and some of my family members were hanging out in the lobby. We asked how she was doing and we all got the same response that she is still acting odd and that we should've seen her last night. My uncle started to describe the scene the same way as my mother did. That it was something out of The Exorcist movie. I showed him a bottle of holy water that we brought, courtesy of my mother in law, and he thought it would be a good idea to sprinkle some in the room.

My wife and I then got a chance to visit her in her room. As we walked in, the lights were dimmed and my cousin's mom was trying to calm her daughter. Soon after we walked in, my cousin started cursing under her breath. My wife and I couldn't believe what we were hearing. A little girl, sweet as hell, yelling out these words is just not right. I know it was hurting her mother being called a B**** and to F*** off and what not. It was as if another person took over my lil cousin's body. We noticed that she was trapped to her bed so she started to yell that she needed to get down and called her mother more curse words demanding that she be released. A nurse soon walked in and advised that it's not best to have visitors if she's acting up since she needs to rest as much as possible and have as little stimulation as possible. We ended up going back to lobby and told our family what went down. They described our experience as mild compared to how she the night before.

From what we were told, she has meningitis, which is some kind of viral infection in her brain that causes her to act and react the way she does. It's so weird because you figure that an illness would not control your body to react so violently. Another cousin of mine likened it to Jim Carrey's character in Me, Myself, and Irene. How his character (Charlie) is nice yet, when provoked, he turns into a completely different person (Hank). It just seems that it's a different girl taking over my little cousin's body. She's on antibiotics to kill off the viral infection. She's going to be on them for the next 2 weeks or so. After hearing another person's experience with meningitis, my family started to prepare themselves for a long bout with this disease.

Turns out that the 2 week antibiotic treatment is just the beginning and if she makes a full recovery, it can take anywhere from 6 to 8 months of medication and therapy. She will be in bed so much that her body will need to relearn how to walk and move about like a normal child would. Another thing that bothered us was that the docs said that the hallucinations may not go away entirely. That's right, my little cousin is hallucinating. She's complained of spiders on the walls, she's been ice skating in her bed, and even started yelling at aliens to leave her alone. It's just horrible that a young is experience this, or any kind of illness that can severely manipulate your body and mind in that manner.

I'm going to try and find out how she's doing now. I'll catch up with you guys later. Later.