Michelle

My son, who should have turned 18 on September 22, 2016, became sick at the age of ten weeks in 1998. His sister had been sick with roseola and an ear infection, he caught both of them from her, and the ear infection became opportunistic, invaded the mastoids and then the meninges. He had full-blown pneumococcal meningitis. He spent the next 8 weeks barely surviving, with seizures, stroke like symptoms, inability to regulate his body temperature, blindness, deafness, unable to feed, two surgeries, etc. We were looking at a lifetime of severe disability. Then his seizures became uncontrollable again, and the next MRI of his brain showed accelerating atrophy that no one could do anything about. We took him home, so he could die surrounded by family, at the age of 5 months, 12 hours, and six minutes, on February 23, 1999. The Prevnar-7 vaccine was approved for general use on February 17, 2000.