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Apr 24, 2009 11:08 pm US/Eastern
I-Team: Meningitis Victim's Sister Speaks
MIAMI (CBS4 I-TEAM) ―
The sister of one of the victims of the South Florida bacterial meningitis outbreak says her sibling might have survived if she would've gotten medical attention sooner. She spoke exclusively to the
CBS4 I-Team.
Twenty year-old Maibelyn Umanzor was the type of person who loved laughter. "Even in the worst moments she would come up with something really silly and out of the blue to make you laugh," said Umanzor's sister.
The sister spoke with CBS4 Friday on the condition we not release her identity. These days Umanzor's family does not have much to laugh about because she is gone--a victim of a meningitis outbreak moving around South Florida. Speaking to
CBS4's David Sutta, the sister says, "She kept taking the pain killers and the fever reducer; obviously it was something more than that."
Mid-March Maibelyn Umanzor started to fight what she thought was the flu. It was really meningitis, a bacteria that causes inflammation in neck and brain fluid. Untreated it can be deadly. According to the sister "All the symptoms, now that I look back, and I think of how she was telling me. She did have the stiff neck. She did have the fevers, the diarrhea, the nausea, state of confusion." After two weeks of fighting the meningitis Maibelyn collapsed and went into cardiac arrest. Paramedics rushed her to Jackson Memorial Hospital. They revived her eight times. After the ninth heart attack though she didn't come back.
From the time she collapsed to her death it took just 15 hours. Umanzor's sister says, "It was too late for her."
The family believes her sister could have been saved if she had just seen a doctor early on. "She was a very sweet girl that's for sure. But she was stubborn though, and I think that's what got her to this point."
This week, when the Health Department announced the outbreak of 13 cases meningitis in South Florida, Umanzor's sister knew she was one of the 13. The sister told us "nobody wants bad things on other people. But in this case I just think of my sister and she was so young."
It's unclear where the 20-year-old caught the bacteria. She worked in a doctor's office but hadn't been in the office for the entire month leading up to her death. That is why the family is asking everyone that if you have the symptoms to not waste a second. "(It) doesn't matter what kind of thing you think, you have just make sure you go to the hospital in time. If she would have been there a week earlier, they probably would have been able to do something. That's what the doctors tell me."
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