Teen contracts meningitis after sharing vape with friends

By Jack Fifield

A mom has recalled the terrifying hours in the lead up to her daughter being hospitaliZed with life-threatening meningitis - which she is believed to have caught after sharing her vape with her friends.

Sian Alderton contracted bacterial meningitis B in October 2024 and was left vomiting and with a red rash following a night out with friends.

The then 18-year-old had to be put into a medically-induced coma just two days after she went on one of her first ever nights out.

Doctors believe she may have caught the bug from sharing a vape with someone in a club.

After rushing her daughter to hospital, her terrified mom Kerrie Durrant was told that Sian may never wake up and could have just 24 hours to live.

Sian has thankfully been left without any long-term complications from the disease, which has killed two young people in a recent outbreak in Kent.

Mom Kerrie, 37, says there were several signs that all was not well with Sian.

She said: “We had a Chinese and we ate normally. At about 8pm she said ‘mom, I don’t feel well’. She wanted to get into my bed – she never wants to get into my bed when she’s ill, so she was quite clingy.

“Through the night, I could hear her waking up. From about 8pm to 5.30/6 in the morning she slept, apart from being sick.

“I kept an eye on her throughout the day and I noticed she wasn’t perking up.

"She was drinking like a goldfish. I said ‘let’s go to the toilet.’ She got up and she couldn’t move – she was aching.

“She crawled to the bathroom. That was the moment I said: ‘hang on a minute, something’s not right’.”

After deciding to go to hospital, doctors rushed to put Sian into an induced coma and Kerrie was told she probably wouldn’t survive the next 24 hours.

Thankfully, the teenager pulled through – and scans show she has been left without any brain damage.

Doctors said Sian may have caught the bug from kissing a boy she was friends with in the club, or from a vape she shared.

Speaking following the recent outbreak, the 19-year-old, from Norwich, Norfolk, said: “I did share a vape with multiple people on that night out, so we believe that’s where I would have gotten it from.

“I haven’t gone on any nights out since then – the most I’ve had the courage to do is go to a pub for maybe an or hour or two, but other than that I haven’t wanted to go out since.

“It hasn’t put me off vapes, though I wouldn’t share with anybody anymore.

“If someone you know has a ‘sickness bug’, but they are also quite delirious or more aggressive than usual, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

“Get it checked ASAP – sometimes the rash doesn’t even appear on people, so you wouldn’t have thought they’d be in a life or death situation.”

Kerrie added that she is sick of seeing misinformation online that Covid jabs may have contributed to the recent outbreak of meningitis B – especially as Sian never even had the jab.

The mom said: “It’s irritating me to see people saying it’s coming from the Covid jab.

“My daughter never had the Covid jab as she’s petrified of needles.

“It annoys me – I can’t see how they think you’d get meningitis from the Covid jab when it was years ago.

“People need to be aware it affects anyone.

“Anyone can get it, it doesn’t matter whether you’re fit and healthy, if it wants to get you, it will.”

According to the NHS, symptoms of meningitis include high temperature, vomiting, headaches, a rash that doesn’t fade when a glass is rolled over it, a stiff neck, a dislike of bright lights, drowsiness or unresponsiveness, and even seizures.

The symptoms can appear in any order, and those affected don’t always get all of them, the health agency said.

The disease is usually caught from people who carry bacteria or a virus in their nose or throat but who aren’t ill themselves.

The bacterial version of the disease, responsible for the outbreak in Kent, is rarer than the viral version.

While the MenACWY vaccine, offered to teenagers and students, protects against the A, C, W, and Y strains of the disease, the meningitis B vaccine is less common.

The MenB vaccine started to be offered to babies on the NHS from 2015.

The same vaccine is offered on the NHS as a vaccine against gonorrhoea for some men who have sex with men.

A private course of the vaccine costs over £200.

In Kent, those who may have been exposed to the bacterial infection are being offered precautionary antibiotics in an effort to prevent the disease from developing or spreading.