A 24-year-old man needed his arms and legs amputated after his doctors misdiagnosed him with the flu when he really had meningitis.
Davide Morana, an Italian man living in Murcia, Spain, went to the doctors in January with a sore jaw and fever. He later went to a hospital emergency room after he started feeling worse. Nurses there took blood and urine samples, and he was diagnosed with the flu. Doctors then sent him home.
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But his condition only got worse. At one point, he had a fever of 102.2 degrees and he started vomiting, reports The Sun. The next day, Morana found brown marks on his face.
“I was feeling very weak,” the sports lover said. “I felt pain in my feet, they felt as if they were frozen, and when I took off my socks I saw how my feet were covered with brown marks like the ones on my face, but a bit bigger.”
He went back to the doctors and was diagnosed with meningitis. Stains on his body began turning purple and began to cover most of his body.
Later, his kidneys began failing and some of the purple marks turned black, while others became blisters. In less than a week, he had all four of his limbs amputated and was in an induced coma.
According to Palmero Today, he was allowed to leave the hospital last month, but has just started the long rehabilitation process. He is learning to use prosthetic limbs, but still needs help.
Morana’s family and friends launched a website and fund to help raise ยฃ87,720 (about $118,000) so Morana can one day live independently.
“Davide was admitted for 87 days, from the middle of January to the beginning of April. And despite everything he suffered, he confesses that he can not be negative, that he can only be grateful to be here today,” reads a statement on a website his family and friends set up. “From the stretcher, on the way to the operating room to be amputated, he winked at us, threw kisses and stuck out his tongue. His jokes ‘Today I slept soundly,’ ‘I would give you a handshake but I do not have any left,’ they made us die of laughter. He has made great friends in the hospital and has infected his good humor and his desire to live to all the staff.”
Morana’s story is not uncommon. In 2013, a 19-year-old California woman, Kaitlyn Dobrow, needed all of her limbs amputated to save her life after she contracted meningitis.
According to Fox News, 9-year-old Brogan-Lei Partridge, who contracted meningitis on her parents’ honeymoon in 2016 and already had her left foot amputated, will need her right leg amputated.
According to the Mayo Clinic, meningitis is “an inflammation of the membranes (meninges) surrounding your brain and spinal cord.” Anyone who suspects they or someone else may have meningitis needs to seek immediate medical attention to prevent complications.
Photo credit: Instagram/ Davide Morana
