Jordan Matukewicz is recovering from a battle with multiple medical complications including bacterial meningitis. She considers herself lucky and doctors say it’s a miracle she made it through a vigorous recovery process.
They say early detection may have saved her life.
“It was a ride,” said the 18-year-old as she reflects on her month’s long battle with bacterial meningitis. “definitely the hardest thing I ever had to do, thus far.”
The medical journey all started in late January after a positive screening for convalescent mononucleosis.
Then in early February, doctors diagnosed her with lupus and on Friday February 17th, Jordan said she wasn't feeling well, “I just felt very really nauseated and joint ache and I had lupus symptoms before that so I thought I was just having a lupus attack.”
But she wasn't. The next day the symptoms intensified her mom says this wasn't just lupus as a rash appeared.
“So that was really the game-changer for us, when we noticed the rash that was very unusual-we haven't seen that before,” said Jordan’s mother Cristina Matukewicz.
Jordan was rushed to the emergency room at Methodist and eventually doctors started treating her for meningitis multiple organs started to fail and Jordan was on full-life-support for nearly three weeks.
“I started calling all my friends and asking them to pray for her and that's what got us through,” said Cristina.
When Jordan awoke she was surrounded by friends and family, “And then I saw my friends and honestly my friends were the ones who told me how bad it was because I was so disoriented that I couldn't really grasp what had happened,” said Jordan.
Doctors said it was early detection that helped Jordan pull through this difficult recovery.
“She was really close but she came through and I think it's amazing to see,” said Dr. Marcus Snow, rheumatology and immunology at Nebraska Medicine.
But now Jordan can stand up even run around for a bit and put this scary medical experience behind her, “I do feel a lot better and it does feel like it’s in the past sort of now,” said Jordan.
Jordan said she has a ways to go in her recovery process but is happy to be able to walk across the stage at her graduation Sunday.
She plans to attend UNO in January in the hopes of becoming an elementary teacher.
According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, approximately 2,600 people in the country get meningococcal disease each year. Between 10-15 percent of the people who development the disease will die.
