HOUSTON— It’s been a long road getting to the steps that Jamie Schanbaum is literally taking today. She has two prosthetic feet. Her hands now just have thumbs. All of it was taken by a very serious battle with meningitis.
What started out as flu-like symptoms for the University of Texas sophomore back in November 2008 turned out to be much worse.
“From 8 p.m. to 11 a.m. the next day, I wasn’t able to move,” said Jamie Schanbaum.
“So the progression of her being healthy to being in that ICU was less than 24 hours,” said Patsy Schanbaum, Jamie’s mother.
Jamie Schanbaum didn’t just have meningitis, which inflames membranes of the brain and spinal cord, she had a serious bacterial form of the illness called meningococcal meningitis.
“Meningitis affects the brain,” said Patsy Schanbaum. “In her case, she was septic. She had meningococcal septicemia so her blood turned toxic. It was poisonous.”
“It can often kill within a few hours of making someone sick,” said Dr. Melanie Mouzoon, an immunization expert at Kelsey-Seybold Clinic.
Jamie Schanbaum’s hands, legs and feet turned black as her body went into full battle mode to survive.
“My body was doing everything it could to secure the inner organs,” she said. “As a result, my limbs became black.”
Treatment in a hyperbaric chamber helped restore oxygen to her skin and save more of her limbs than doctors originally thought possible. Doctors saved her thumbs on her hand and were able to amputate below the knee. Schanbaum said it made learning to walk on prosthetics easier.
Her seven-month ordeal led her to a seat beside the governor, as he signed a bill into state law bearing her name.
Now every new college student going into on-campus housing must get a meningitis vaccine and they must show proof that they got it at least 10 days before going into campus housing.
“It will save lives," said Anna Dragsback, the Executive Director of the Immunization Partnership.
Dragsback worked on getting the legislation pushed through.
“Meningitis affects college students living in college dormitories at about three times the rate than it does the normal population,” she said.
“High school and college kids tend to share their soft drinks and their water bottles on the sports field and they can share the germ,” said Mouzoon.
Jamie Schanbaum hopes that someday the law will require all college students to get vaccinated, but she is proud of the strides that were made in her name.
“There are probably a lot of people who don’t know it, but I probably saved their lives,” said Jamie Schanbaum.
