Woman’s Death From Meningitis Raises Concerns

A Moorpark College student’s death this week from bacterial meningitis put hundreds of her classmates and co-workers on alert as health officials spread word about the contagious disease’s symptoms.

Kristin Mikesell, 19, of Thousand Oaks died Wednesday at Los Robles Regional Medical Center after being admitted to the emergency room with fatigue, neck pain and a rash. She had endured several days of cold-like symptoms but didn’t realize she was battling something more serious until it was too late, hospital spokeswoman Kris Carraway-Bowman said.

“She had a classic case,” Carraway-Bowman said. “You wake up one day and say, ‘God, I feel awful’ and you go off to work. It progressively gets worse and you think ‘I’m coming down with the flu.’ [In some cases] you go to the doctor and he says, ‘Yeah, it looks like you’ve got the flu.’ And you still get worse. And by the time you get to the E.R. it’s a matter of life and death.”

Bacterial meningitis can be treated with antibiotics if caught early. Untreated, however, it can be fatal, causing a swelling in the tissue around the brain and spinal cord that can lead to organ failure.

Meningococcal meningitis, the type Mikesell contracted, generally is spread among people who are within a few feet of one another, possibly through a sneeze or an exchange of saliva, as in sharing food, a drink or a cigarette.

It is not the most contagious form of meningitis, but it can be the most dangerous because it progresses so rapidly, said Elise McKee, a Ventura County public health nurse.

“It can kill you within 24 hours,” she said.

About 15% to 20% of the population carry some of the bacteria in the back of their throats, she said.

Even so, only one in 100,000 people in California develops meningococcal disease each year, said Ben Werner, chief of disease investigations for the state Department of Health Services. It typically is fatal to 10% to 15% of those who contract it. Another 10% are very likely to suffer lasting effects, such as brain damage, deafness or gangrene.

It was not known how Mikesell contracted the illness. But Werner said in most cases “people are getting sick not from people with other cases but from sharing saliva with people who are perfectly healthy.”

Forty-two cases of viral meningitis and 15 cases of bacterial meningitis have been reported in Ventura County since January 2000. Most cases were not fatal.

This was the second case of meningococcal meningitis in the county in recent months, McKee said. A 12-year-old Thousand Oaks girl was treated for the same strain earlier this year but survived. Health officials said they do not believe there was any link between the two cases.

State officials have been concerned about clusters of meningitis found this year at four schools in Northern California. Doctors in Ventura County said there are no signs of an epidemic locally, though it was only after an exhaustive notification effort that they reached that conclusion.

As a part-time student at Moorpark College and a newly hired telemarketer for Tony Hoffman Productions in Thousand Oaks, Mikesell had daily contact with many people.

She had about 650 co-workers who have a variety of shifts. She also was taking two night courses, which put her in the same classrooms as 43 students and two professors. All of these people were notified of her death and told to seek medical attention if they exhibited any of the same symptoms or had been in close contact with Mikesell. To date, officials said, none of these people was found to have the illness.

Mikesell’s employer, Tony Hoffman, said his other college-aged telemarketers are devastated by her death, even though she had only worked for the company about three weeks.

“For many of them, it’s their first experience with someone dying,” he said. “Everybody was thinking, ‘Did I share a cigarette with her or drink from the water fountain after her?’ ”