Lucas Martin, a 21-year-old graduate from England, recently awarded a degree in international business from the University of Liverpool, tragically died on September 12, 2023, less than a week after he began feeling unwell. His family had initially mistaken his symptoms for freshersโ flu and have since issued a grave warning to young adults not to dismiss illnesses.
Lucas had in fact meningitis, which manifested with a bad headache and feverish symptoms. His brother Connor spoke to BBC explaining that โultimately we and him didnโt think much of it, we just thought it was freshersโ flu.โ
Further, Connor explained, โHe had no distinct signs of any illness. He became poorly a week or so before he was admitted to hospital and we all thought it was the equivalent of freshers flu.
โ[Lucas] was up in his room a lot of the time and we werenโt monitoring him on a super close basis unfortunately.
โHe would go up and down and weโd think he was on the mend, and then heโd regress again โ but never to a point where we were seriously concerned.โ
What made it harder to spot that Lucas had meningitis was that he hadnโt displayed some of the most common signs of the life-threatening inflammation such as sensitivity to light or rash.
โHe just had flu-like symptoms,โ his 29-year-old brother added.
โHe was working hard, so I donโt know if it played a part,โ he said.
Lucas had been feeling sick for five days when his father, Brett, called him and noticed he had difficulty speaking. Since he and Lucasโ mother were in Edinburgh and Connor in Birmingham, they asked Lucasโ uncle to go check on him at his family home on the Isle of Man where he was temporarily residing while doing a part time job.
Sadly, when his uncle saw him, Lucas was in an awful state.
He was then taken to the hospital where he was diagnosed with meningitis and placed in an induced coma from which he never regained consciousness.
Lucasโ family is now urging others to never dismiss any symptoms and seek medical help if there is anything worrying about your health or the health of a loved one.
โIf youโre worried, take action. Donโt just dismiss it as flu. We work hard not to blame ourselves โ we just didnโt think of it,โ he added.
Lucas has been described as โa force of nature.โ His family said, โHe was very entrepreneurialโฆ just a very driven, personable young man. He was taken too soon.โ
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