Fin Fang Foom Guitarist Recalls His Battle Against Spinal Meningitis

Back in 2004, guitarist Michael Triplett of Fin Fang Foom faced a health battle that nearly killed him. He generally explains the illness that sidelined him from music as spinal meningitis in quick passing, just because it's easier to explain than the couple of illnesses he was actually fighting. "I was actually diagnosed with aseptic meningitis," Triplett told Noisecreep. "Then it spread into my lungs and I got aspiration pneumonia. Then when my lungs collapsed, I went on the respirator, so I got a staff infection from the respirator."

Spinal meningitis is an infection that causes great swelling around the brain and the spinal cord. Being that this affects the entire nervous system, the results are often deadly. In some cases, people have had to have limbs amputated due to rashes progressing way past gangrene stage. Loss of sight and brain damage are known to result, as well. In Triplett's case, technically being diagnosed as the aseptic form means it wasn't a bacterial form of the infection. But as is what happens with the majority of people that become infected, there is no clear explanation of how the person contracted it.

"The infectious control doctors would be 'You have an overpopulation of white blood cells so that we don't truly know what you have,'" Triplett recalled being told once he awoke in a hospital bed. Upon awakening, Triplett came to find that he was paralyzed. "I've heard of other people going blind as well," Triplett said. "I guess it's from nerve damage in your spine. When I was getting it sick, it really affected my eyes. The light bothered my eyes and I got really sensitive to it." Once he was released from the hospital, it took almost a year of rehabilitation to be able to walk and be ready to return to his life.

"They also said I had encephalitis," Triplett added to the list of what he has overcame. "I guess that's kind of common with people who have spinal meningitis. When your brain is swelling and your lungs are collapsing your not gonna feel good," he laughed.

Triplett now laughs about it but at the time the remaining two members of the band worried if they were had been infected as well. One of the most common places for forms of spinal meningitis to spread is in the close quarters of places like dorm rooms. "We were worried we also got it from being in a small van together," bassist Eddie Sanchez said.

"He was just feeling sick one day ... just got real week. Our drummer -- they were roommates at the time -- took him to the hospital, and he ended up not leaving for four months. He was in ICU for a couple of weeks," Sanchez recalled while discussing how it all began.

But now Triplett is back to form and back on stage with the rest of Fin Fang Foom. Recently the band's first full-length in six years, 'Monomyth,' was released, and Sanchez revealed that the grand name of the recording was inspired by Triplett's fight for his life. "When I first wanted to call the album 'Monomyth,' it was because of what Mike Triplett went through. We thought he was going to be dead. Even when he left the hospital, and he was getting better, they said he would never walk again. It took a year out of his life, and finally were back to doing what we used to do."