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Plano Mother Warns About Bacterial Meningitis
A Plano mother is still mourning the death of her 19-year-old daughter and hopes her story will raise awareness of bacterial meningitis.
Tammy Futterman said the disease took her daughter’s life three years ago, and it could have been prevented. Eighteen states now require vaccinations before admitting students into colleges, but still leaves students in 32 states unprotected.
Futterman’s daughter Rachel was one of those.
At age 19, her mother said she was beautiful, vivacious and smart. A sophomore on the University of South Florida volleyball team and a Delta Gamma Sorority sister, Rachel hoped one day to become an attorney.
“The World was her Oyster,” one friend said.
Sept. 24 marks the third year anniversary of her death, her mother said. The Futtermans had moved to Plano from Florida five years ago and said their daughter was always the picture of proper health.
But suddenly, Rachel became sick at school.
“She had actually stayed home from school on Friday and thought she just had a bad headache,” Tammy Futterman said.
Tammy found out later that Rachel had a grand mal seizure. After an early-morning phone call, Tammy was sent to the hospital by 2 p.m.
“By then, they’d already determined that she was probably brain dead,” Futterman said, holding a tissue to wipe her eyes. “She was ripped from our lives.”
Health officials determined Rachel Futterman had contracted bacterial meningitis. There was panic and a flurry of news reports in Tampa. Students said they were in shock. Health officials said Rachel’s was “a young life taken too soon.”
Bacteria Meningitis starts like the flu but quickly becomes worse. Infectious disease experts say students in dorms are most at risk.
“The germ lives in the throat. So it’s easily transmitted from one person to another,” said Dr. Edward Goodman, an infectious disease specialist with Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas.
Rachel Futterman lived in a sorority house.
“It’s being congregated,” Goodman said. “Troops in barracks, prisoners in jail: There have been outbreaks. The idea of sharing air space, it’s coughing, sneezing, talking, drinking from a glass.”
A vaccine provides a strong immunity. After Rachel’s death, USF students quickly lined-up for it. Rachel Futterman never received one herself. Her new Dallas doctor didn’t carry it and USF didn’t require it at the time.
“The president there has since made it mandatory on her campus for anyone living on campus,” Tammy Futterman said.
Tammy, now an advocate with the National Meningitis Association, said parents with out-of-state students shouldn’t wait.
“There’s really no excuse. It can be covered with your insurance or not. There are several pharmacies that subsidize it. It’s less than $20. I’d give way more than that to have my daughter back,” she said.
Doctors consider bacterial meningitis relatively rare. Goodman said he has seen no more than eight in his career.
“They’re memorable,” Goodman said. “Sometimes the disease causes loss of limbs.”
Goodman believes everyone above six months of age should be vaccinated for bacterial meningitis.
“There’s no longer certain groups. Everybody should be vaccinated,” he said.
The 18 states that require the bacterial meningitis vaccine for university students are: Arizona, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont and Virginia.
For more information on bacteria meningitis visit the National Meningitis Association website here.
“You can go by the odds if you want; the one in a million that my kid will get it,” Futterman said. “But for me, that one is 100 percent. It was my daughter.”
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