Sitting in the front row of the large classroom in Ballantine Hall, she says she’s nervous, but to look at her, you wouldn’t know it. Aside from the solemn expression replacing a usually radiant smile, she remains calm and poised.\nIt’s just past 11:15 a.m. on a Friday as sophomore Ashley Lee listens patiently while her instructor stands to give her a short introduction. Within minutes, she’s due in the front of the room, and she has hardly blinked.\nHer posture inside the hard wooden chair is perfect and her short blonde hair playfully touches her neck. As she folds her hands on her lap, you can see their position is strategic. The action of concealing her mangled right hand seems subconscious, but today is not about hiding. \nThe introduction is over. With the slightest sign of a struggle she stands, finds her balance and climbs onto the small platform before the class. Her walk is slow, hindered by the protective boot she wears over her right foot. \nIf it’s difficult to stand before the packed room, she never lets it show. Leaning casually against a desk, she takes a deep breath and begins to talk about her life and the disease that changed it forever – meningococcal meningitis. \nWith scarred arms, she gestures behind her to the large projection screen as she speaks about a documentary on meningitis awareness. It’s a documentary she said she’s never felt confident enough to show until now. It’s a documentary about her. \nBut after a four-month hospital stay, 11 surgeries, three lost fingers and an amputated left foot, Lee stands in front of a room of her peers, and for the first time, finally lets go.\n“I used to be scared to talk about this in front of people,” she says, pausing to look around, “but I am at the point where I don’t care anymore. It happened to me for a reason, so here I am to tell you about it.”
The beginning of a nightmare\nIt’s not that important. \nThat was the answer Ashley and her father received from their family doctor in Terre Haute when they asked for a meningitis vaccination. Her parents had heard of meningitis, and although IU did not require its students to have the vaccine before attendance, they thought it was better to be safe than sorry.\nUpon their request, however, her doctor told them that meningitis was a rare disease. He told them the vaccine was too hard to keep available and if they still thought it was necessary, they could seek the shot elsewhere. \nWhat he didn’t tell them was that meningitis is a deadly disease with the power to kill within hours. \nThey left without the shot.\nA month into her freshman year, Ashley returned home for a weekend and awoke on a Saturday morning feeling like she had the flu. Quickly, she learned this was not the case.\n“I remember getting so sick on Saturday that I got myself up to go vomit, but I couldn’t get myself off of the ground,” she said. “I fell (because) my legs were so weak. My dad had to literally pick me up, carry me downstairs and rush me to the hospital.”\nHer condition seemed to grow worse by the minute. Pain like she’d never felt before consumed her entire body as vomiting became more frequent. The team of doctors inside the emergency room struggled to make a diagnosis, and her family could only watch in horror. Frustration mounted on both sides and the search for the cause of her illness became an interrogation. \n“They thought I was dehydrated and were pretty much hell-bent on the fact that I had done some kind of drug that I wasn’t telling them about,” she said. “But I’ve never done drugs in my life. So I told them, ‘Go ahead, take my blood.’”\nHer blood tested negative, and as guesses continued to fail, concern from the staff seemed to waiver. They even considered sending her home. Her family’s patience wore thin. \n“It was really frustrating because, not to go back and say ‘What if,’ but if they would have sent me home I probably would have just died in my bed,” she said. \nThen the spots appeared. First on her back and then across her forehead, the strange rash spread quickly. Her parents demanded that their daughter be transferred to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. It was a decision that would save her life. \nBefore she had a chance to grasp what was happening, Ashley was thrust into the double doors of an ambulance and rushed to Indianapolis. Because she was already 18 years old, her parents were not allowed to ride with her. She was alone – and she was terrified.\n“I felt the disease attacking my whole body, going through my whole body, from head to toe,” she said. “It seriously was the worst feeling I’ve had in my entire life.”\nShe can’t tell you how long it took for the ambulance to arrive in Indianapolis – all she remembers is “pure hell.” Paramedics held her down as she writhed in pain. Unmedicated for the entire ride, all she could do was scream.\n“The only outlet was to just yell in pain,” she said. “They couldn’t give me pain medicine because they didn’t know what was wrong with me.” \nAs doors to Methodist flew open, Ashley was rushed inside where a new medical team was awaiting her arrival. \n“I was lying down, and there were nurses all around,” she said. “I was just overwhelmed because everybody kept coming in and saying, ‘Oh, I don’t know what this is. I’ve never seen it before. This is really weird, what do we do?’ right in front of me, over and over again. I guess they didn’t have a choice because it happened so quickly, but I was so scared. My body was in agony. I wanted to explode.” \nAnd then, after hours of excruciating pain, there was darkness.
The aftermath\nAround 1 a.m. that Sunday morning doctors diagnosed her with bacterial meningitis – an infection that affects 1,400 to 2,800 people every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site, and kills one in four adolescents who contract it, according to the National Meningitis Association Web site. \nThe medicine they gave her rendered her unconscious. But later that day, she woke up.\n“At the time, I had a paper due that Monday and that was all I worried about,” she said. “I was just like, ‘Dad I have to get my paper done. I have to get my paper done by Monday.’ He told me, ‘Ashley, don’t worry about it.’ At the time I didn’t know what a bacterial infection was or what had just happened to me.”\nBecause she was treated with a new drug called Xigris, a super antibiotic, she was still alive. By Tuesday, Xigris had fought off the bacteria that were attacking her body. The disease was gone, but she wasn’t out of danger. \nAwake for mere hours a day, visitors were restricted to immediate family until she could regain strength. But she had someone by her side 24 hours a day.\n“I wasn’t myself,” she said. “When people would come, I’d talk, but I couldn’t move. I would fall asleep in the middle of conversations. I’d put on a front like I was fine because I was just so damn stubborn, but my dad saw right through that. He cut down the amount of visitors until I was out of intensive care. I know that was hard for him to do.”\nDespite ridding her of the infection, the damage to her body was severe. Doctors had to tell the heartbroken girl that from her ankle down, her left foot would need to be removed, along with three of her fingers. As Ashley struggled to deal with the term ‘amputee,’ doctors battled to keep her right leg. The infection had left it ravished, and they had no choice but to remove all tissue but the muscle and tendon in order to spare the leg. Skin grafts now cover the remaining tissue.\nThe effect the disease left on her body is a painful detail for her to accept.\n“People see me from the outside and they think I’m fine, but I’m not,” she said biting through tears. “I can live normally, but this has taken so much from me. I hate to complain. I’m so lucky to be alive, but there are days where it can just overwhelm you.”\nAshley spent the next three months of her life in pediatric rehabilitation for physical therapy and recovery. She couldn’t wait to begin to heal.
The strength within\nRehabilitation was not only about physical recovery. For Ashley, it was about picking up the pieces; not only finding herself, but finding the meaning of family and the strength to step forward in a life that had been swept upside down.\nShe worked tirelessly to regain the strength to attempt simple physical tasks, but none were bigger than her struggle to walk again. With no left foot and a severely weakened right leg, Ashley prepared every day to adjust herself for the task; and much like a child, she found that her first steps were inspired by her father.\n“I’ve always been a daddy’s girl,” she said. “But he was there morning, noon and night. He bought me breakfast, lunch and dinner because I hated the hospital food. He went to therapy with me and took me on rides in my wheelchair just so I could see the outside. We watched “The Price Is Right” every day. \n“I knew I’d always had a special bond with my dad but that’s when I figured it out, that first day of therapy. I wanted so badly to surprise him. I walked with my walker and I walked right to him and he just started to cry.” \nShe will be the first to tell you that her experience was devastating, but she’ll be damned if it will stand in her way. \nDefying all odds, Ashley fought through the ramifications of her physical damage and made a triumphant return to the University she loved, less than one year after facing the disease. \nHer parents told her she wasn’t ready, but in her heart, she knew it was time. She came to campus once again in August, perhaps with more anticipation than her arrival as a freshman.\nGoing back to class was the first step of moving forward from her past. And although her experiences are impossible to forget, she said she sees the beauty in her life as she looks to fate and her faith for explanation and direction. Now a biology major planning to attend medical school, she said her career will focus on treating infectious diseases.\n“These events changed my entire life,” she said. “I kept asking myself, ‘Where do I go now? Do I sit and let it consume me? Or do I face the world?’ \nThere are definitely days when I sit and ask, ‘Why me?’ But I’ve always had a strong connection with God, and I know I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”\nHaving to step back and let his daughter take over her life once again was difficult for Ashley’s father, Tom. He still carries the anger of the ill-given medical advice that persuaded them to do without a vaccination that could have prevented her near-death experience. For him, an apology just isn’t enough.\n“Sorry doesn’t fix anything,” he said. “We went there asking for a vaccination and we were bluntly told that it wasn’t important, that if we wanted it, we could get it somewhere else. But Ashley was an 18-year-old girl who had just heard from a medical professional that it wasn’t important. Why would it become a priority?”\nNow 55 miles away from her on a daily basis, he describes his primary role as one of support for all tasks, big and small. \nHe, along with Ashley’s step-mom Sam Lee, mother Elaine Lee and two brothers Tommy and Nick, find themselves making sometimes biweekly trips to Bloomington to assist with laundry, grocery shopping and cleaning. And he wouldn’t have it any other way. \n“Mental support is the biggest thing we do,” he said. “Ashley’s strong, but she looks to me. She says, ‘Dad you’re my Rock of Gibraltar.’ And even if I feel like I can’t be that strong sometimes, I just have to be.\n“She’s stronger than any 19-year-old could possibly be. We are so proud of her for making the effort to pick up and move on with her life because she has every right to sit and cry about what has happened to her. But she doesn’t. And she won’t. She’ll tell you she gets her strength from me, but I’m telling you that we get it from her.”
A happily ever after, after all\nAs credits roll, the lights of the lecture hall come up on a swarm of whispers. The room seems stunned. \nCould this be the girl who was a part of the horror that had just appeared on the screen? \nWithout the slightest bit of fear, Ashley stands and surveys the room again. But this time, in her face, there is an air of confidence that hasn’t appeared before.\nA classmate raises her hand to ask how she became a part of the 20-minute film. \nAshley looks straight ahead and tells her that she is now a spokesperson for the National Meningitis Association, which produced the documentary, and that simply, there just aren’t that many survivors left.\n“This is what meningitis can do,” she says in a hard voice. “If you haven’t already, get the vaccination. It can save your life. I know everyone thinks it can’t happen to them. I didn’t. But it can. And it happened to me.” \nAnd then, she exhales. \nClass is over. It is time to continue the day. \nShe carefully gathers her books, pulls her tote over her shoulder and thanks her instructor one last time before opening the door and fading into sea of students. As she blends into in the crowd, one would never know Ashley Lee stared at death and lived to tell about it. \nLook close enough and you can see her scars. But look closer still, and you will see her strength.
