I have just spent 6 days inside a children’s hospital. My son got meningitis. I felt him clawing to me like a terrified koala when I got to the hospital. I held his tiny hand watching my hyper curious baby go apathetic, while listening the doctor recited everything that could go wrong with a lumbar puncture. I told him it was ok to be scared and we where there to protect him, while swallowing down my own horror. I was broken into a thousand pieces while holding him down to replace the needle where he was getting medications, and felt my heart sinking the first time he tried to walk and could not. I cried alone when he recovered his spirit and walking and appetite and bad temper and sense of humor and was taken for a walk outside of of the hospital.
This was the mildest form of meningitis, caused by Enterovirus. He has been vaccinated against the worst kind as soon as he could. People against vaccines have no connection with reality. Reading the complications on Wikipedia is one thing. Seeing it breathing so close to your child, scars you.