I am writing this at the hospital while watching my mother lie in a hospital bed. For nutrition, bags of fluid are connected to her arms. A machine monitors her vital signs. A tube to her nostrils feeds her life-giving oxygen. Nurses and medical technicians have been drawing blood and other fluids from her body for the last 72 hours. I am alone with her. I feel tired and helpless. I suppose she feels the same way except multiplied a thousand fold.

The cruel side of the cycle of life not featured in The Lion King.

More than 40 years ago we were a mirror image of where we are today. She helplessly watched me dying slowly in a hospital bed from meningitis.

I still have vivid flashbacks of that experience like snippets of scenes stitched together for a movie preview.

It all began because I was late for school. Because I lived in the outskirts of the city the morning commute to school was long and unpredictable. Traffic could get very heavy very quickly causing me to be, on occasion, very late.

I went to an all boys school that had a rigid rules like the military. The punishment for tardiness was infamously called “post”. It was called that because latecomers were made to stand ramrod straight under the noonday sun in the middle of the school’s quadrangle. It was hot and it was humiliating.

I fell very ill the afternoon of my posting. I was vomiting and hallucinating. I was hospitalized that evening.

Meningitis survivors share a common experience: the dreaded Spinal Tap. For the few unfortunate souls, it involves inserting a rather large needle between two vertebrae for the purpose of drawing fluid. The fluid is tested for signs of meningitis.

I had two Spinal Taps. I don’t remember much about the first one except that it was painful even if I was given an anesthetic. But the second one is, without doubt, a core memory. I was crying and begging for it not to be done. Because I was struggling the orderlies held me down to prevent me from moving. Eventually I reached a point of exhaustion and I gave up fighting. My remaining energy went to sobbing.

I remember my mother lying next to me to hold my hand and comfort me. Her face was in front of mine. Through my tears I saw her crying. One of the rare times I ever saw her crying. And now I know why. She felt tired and helpless. Exactly the way I feel now watching a medical technician insert a gauge 18 needle into my mother’s frail arm.

I have accepted that my mom is approaching the end of a long and happy life. In the proper order of things, a son should bury his mother. However, it’s an altogether different matter when a mother buries her son. My mother came close to that those many years ago. I imagine that grief would have taken a huge bite of her soul and would have left a void that would forever remain unfilled. That same grief continues to nibble and gnaw never truly going away.

A mother’s love for her child shouldn’t be tested in that manner.

Every year, thousands of children contract meningitis, a devastating disease whose high case fatality rate and transmitability cause it to remain a major global public health challenge.

The most common form, bacterial meningitis, can be fatal within 24 hours.

Many meningitis survivors suffer its long-term effects such as impairment of senses, seizures, limb weakness, and scarring. In some cases, sepsis sets in leading to limb amputations.

I contracted meningitis as a child. I am fortunate not to suffer from any long-term adverse effects. However, the memories of the pain and the trauma that I suffered remain.

Meningitis is a disease that no child should ever have to endure. No parent should lose a child to meningitis.

For this reason, I am running the 2025 London Marathon to help the Meningitis Research Foundation achieve its goal of a meningitis-free world.

Join me in this fight. Let us eradicate meningitis. Let us save our children.