My father has been a professional chef my entire life. One Thursday night, he was running the line at the restaurant and began to develop a headache and fever but continued going through the motions at work. This is the information he knows from asking coworkers, since he does not remember anything once the symptoms began. After a weekend of developing increasing symptoms, he had a coworker drive him to the emergency room. That Sunday night in hospital triage, nurses and doctors saw a Mexican American man walk into the emergency room in a sickly, disoriented state, presumed he was overdosing on drugs, and left him in the waiting room as a problem to deal with later. Also at this point, the hospital contacted his emergency contact but to no avail; the contact was escorted out of the hospital after seeing my father in this condition and giving the hospital personnel a piece of his mind. After more than five hours in the waiting room, and dipping in and out of consciousness, my father was finally admitted into the emergency room. As the doctor was asking questions to determine a diagnosis, my father just stared at the doctor with a blank face. After realizing their terrible mistake, doctors put him in a medically induced coma, diagnosed him with and treated him for meningitis and he awoke three days later. Soon after, it was realized that he had lost his ability to hear due to the meningitis. Since then, my dad has received, top-tier, audiological care and thrives with a cochlear implant, and I have developed a love for audiology.
There is also a video from when I was an undergraduate student. I interviewed my Dad for a project about meningitis and hearing loss and in it he explains his story and his experience a little bit more.
Sofia Macias