A 23-year-old model who suffered from meningitis almost lost her career after being bed-ridden for two months, according to the Daily Mail.
Holly Keating, who has appeared in several magazines, suddenly fell sick with meningitis but has now recovered fully.
"When I got sick, I was really terrified," she said. "When you hear the word meningitis you just panic, and you immediately think the worst. It felt like my brain was trying to push through my skull. I felt so weak and was being sick all the time, and to top it all off it felt like my career was being taken away from me. In the modeling industry if you're out of the game - even for a short time - people forget about you. You get passed over for jobs and eventually people don't remember your name."
One of the first symptoms Keating experienced was severe headaches. According to her, she was never the type of person to become sick, so when she started getting headaches at work, she immediately thought that something might be wrong with her.
She explained that the kind of headache she experienced was unlike any other.
"It felt like someone had put a bicycle pump in my ear and was just pumping and pumping - the pressure in my head was horrendous," she said.
Keating tried taking medication but nothing worked. The day after, she visited a hospital, where it was confirmed that she was suffering from viral meningitis. She was then confined for three days, after which Keating's doctors advised her to stay in bed for the next two months.
"My career has snowballed so to be stuck down with something like this was very frustrating. If you're not available to work you just get passed up," she said.
