The things you learn ...

So my brother called today. Among some good news was the bad news - that he had to go to the hospital last night because of massive headaches and came home with a diagnosis of viral meningitis.

This freaked me out, because there was all this hype and paranoia about meningitis when I was in college, and we had to queue up for a couple hours to get our $85 immunizations in the basement of the Washakie Center (this was about 1999). And there are all these TV commercials now about how all these people's kids died of meningitis - died very quickly.

So I felt myself go a little pale when Matt said he'd started having the headaches on Monday and didn't get his diagnosis (via spinal tap) 'til Friday night.

The difference is viral vs. bacterial meningitis. The hype and paranoia are about bacterial meningitis, which is what we all had those immunizations for in college. (Meningitis, for the record, attacks the lining of the spinal cord and the brain, and you can have everything from a stiff neck and a fever all the way to siezures and death. It's contagious, too ...)

Viral meningitis is apparently very common and not very threatening (as in, it's not likely to kill you, whereas bacaterial meningitis is likely to kill you).

But here's something new that I learned while doing the obligatory Big Sister read-through of Web MD's collection on meningitis: Bacterial meningitis can come from untreated streptococcal bacteria -- strep throat.

So there's your reason to get your sore throats (or your kids' sore throats) checked out. It could be strep throat, and it could lead to somethig that could kill you (or them).