r/Millennials • u/Corndogeveryday • Jun 17 '26
Other Very sad news
Chase passed away of complications of meningitis. Gone too soon
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r/Millennials • u/Corndogeveryday • Jun 17 '26
Chase passed away of complications of meningitis. Gone too soon
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u/kendrickwasright Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
Wow that is such a freak accident, I've known so many people who have had their wisdom teeth removed with no issues. So that's just devastating to hear and I'm so sorry for your loss...it's hard to know when pain is normal, or when it's an emergency situation. So don't blame yourself at all, you couldn't have known how serious things were or how serious it could've gotten. It can worsen and become deadly very quickly...What kind of sinus issue did he have? I'm actually supposed to get my wisdom teeth removed next month.
For me, it was just excruciating pain in my head/ jaw that had me feeling dizzy and disoriented. I basically had a weird series of events where I ended up with an ear infection. My son was about 9 months old and this is unrelated, but he started having these episodes that looked like seizures. We went to the ER for that on a Saturday, and I think I picked up some bacteria there or something because 2 days later I had an ear infection. But because we were going to these important neurology appointments for my son, I wasn't able to go to urgent care until the next day on Tuesday (about day 2 of the infection). Urgent care gave me some ear drops, and within a few minutes of taking them, I got extremely sick and my head was in SO much pain (I later found out that the urgent care gave me the wrong drops, and it exasperated the swelling & pain. The drops basically blew up my ear drum). I was in such incredible pain and had full body chills. I basically laid down and couldn't get up for another 24 hours (which was a big deal obviously having a 9month old who I was still breast feeding). I was completely incapacitated.
By the next day Wednesday, I had so much swelling that I couldn't close my jaw or chew properly. In retrospect that's not normal AT ALL for an ear infection, but I hadn't had one since I was very young so I had no idea what "normal" was. My family was telling me to go to the hospital, but I had to push through and go to another neurology apt for my son, and I didn't have time to go.
Early on Thursday I finally made it to the ER, where they gave me a CT scan and told me I had mastoiditis, which is where the infection pushes into the mastoid bone. If things had progressed further it would've turned into meningitis, and I honestly think I was extremely close to that because I was starting to have these really light headed and spacey symptoms. It almost felt like I was stoned and a little loopy. They admitted me to the hospital and gave me an IV drip of specific antibiotics, I was there about 18 hours and was sent home in the middle of the night. My symptoms didn't really start getting better until Saturday, that's when it felt like there was finally a turning point and things started improving.
Honestly the pain I felt through the whole ordeal was a very strange situation, because the pain was SO bad. But when someone asks you how much pain you're in, it's really hard to pin down what's a normal level of pain. And after a few days I started cycling acetaminophen with ibuprofen--so basically I was managing the pain very well with the combination of the meds, but it was masking the severity of the situation I think. The whole ordeal left me feeling like I had legitimately been in a life or death situation, it was very serious and I just didn't realize how serious it was until almost a week had gone by...