One day in August 2011, Penny Hauser spied a bin of fresh cantaloupes at a grocery store in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “Mike loves cantaloupe,” she thought. While recovering from a grueling bone marrow transplant, her 68-year-old spouse had dropped 30 pounds. Now he was on high-dose corticosteroids and eager to eat. So as Mike enjoyed the melon later that day, Penny inwardly cheered.
But weeks later, something was wrong. “It was a Saturday night, and Mike was watching college football,” Penny recalls. “I went to bed.” By 2 a.m., he still hadn’t joined her. She found him on the couch in agony. “My head is killing me,” he groaned, taking a half-tab of Vicodin. For the rest of the night, the retired podiatrist stared at their bedroom ceiling.
The following morning, Mike vomited and felt warm to the touch. Soon he couldn’t walk, and then he stopped talking altogether. He landed in the ER, where a spinal tap showed meningitis — inflammation usually caused by an infection. He received intravenous antibiotics and was taken to the ICU.
