Former St Laurence pupil Katie Ricketts is sharing her first-hand experience about meningitis and septicaemia during national Meningitis Awareness Week starting on Monday. It seeks to make people aware of the symptoms.

Miss Ricketts, 23, caught meningitis while at Plymouth University in January 2011, and spent three weeks in hospital. She had bacterial meningitis and meningococcal septicaemia leading to reactive arthritis which then needed keyhole surgery.

She said: “It happened over the course of a day. I had the shivers, couldn’t keep warm and went to bed. I drank lots of fluids and all the things you do when you have flu.”

She was living in halls of residence at the time and her friends kept checking on her, but the next morning she couldn’t get out of bed and was vomiting so they called NHS Direct. She was rushed to the intensive care unit at Plymouth Hospital.

After months recovering at home in South Wraxall, Miss Ricketts returned to Plymouth University to take her exams, graduating last September with a 2:1.

In 2012 she made a fundraising skydive for the charity.

For more advice on the illness visit www.meningitis.org