At 18, Sara Stelzer was in the prime of her life — a college freshman excited for her classes and being part of a sorority at San Diego State University — when she suddenly became very ill.
She called her parents on a Sunday night in the fall of 2014 to tell them she had a headache. By Monday morning, it seemed like Sara had the flu. Her parents told her to pick up some Theraflu and get some rest.
But then things suddenly took a turn for the worse. Sara’s father Greg got a text from one of her friends, saying that his daughter was in the emergency room. Greg and Sara’s mom, Laurie, immediately drove to the hospital. “Every bit of information that we got along that ride was worse than the last piece of information,” Laurie tells Yahoo Lifestyle.
The parents tried to reassure themselves by focusing on the fact that Sara was a healthy teenager who had never been seriously sick before. “They’ll save her and she’ll be fine,” Greg recalls thinking.
By the time Sara’s parents arrived at the hospital, their daughter was in a coma in the intensive care unit (ICU). The neurosurgeon told them that they weren’t seeing any brain activity and that they believed she had bacterial meningitis. “We just didn’t know anything about bacterial meningitis,” says Laurie. “We didn’t know to even ask about those symptoms.”
Sara’s parents would soon learn that bacterial meningitis moves swiftly and can be life threatening if not treated immediately. In Sara’s case, it was too late to save her life.
Adds Greg: “All of a sudden, within two days, we lost her.”
After losing their youngest child, whom Laurie describes as “tall, beautiful, vibrant — really a ray of sunshine,” she says: “It was a very hard hole to come out of.”
Although Sara had previously received the meningitis vaccine, it was only for the “A, C, W and Y strain — not for the B strain,” notes Laurie. “They came out with the meningitis B vaccine shortly after she passed away.”
Laurie shares that because the meningitis B vaccine isn’t mandated, many teens and young adults are unknowingly unprotected against the dangerous disease.
According to the National Meningitis Association (NMA), teens should ideally ask for the meningitis B vaccine at their 16-year doctor’s visit. In fact, one of the most at-risk groups are teens and young adults ages 16 to 23, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and people who live in crowded settings such as college dorms. The NMA also suggests that teens get the second dose of the meningitis ACWY vaccine at the 16-year visit and get both shots at the same time in order to simplify the process.
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