Touching down in Japan, Anna Gallo was filled with a rare kind of excitement she had never felt before.
Like many Australians, it was somewhere she had always dreamt of visiting.
Finally in January 2026, after months of planning, she and her boyfriend Liam McDonald, 25, were there, ready to have the trip of a lifetime exploring their way across the country.
They had no idea that by the end of their trip, Anna would be clinging to life in a Tokyo hospital, with doctors unsure if she would even survive.
The 24-year-old had contracted deadly meningococcal disease, a bacterial infection that caused Anna to get meningitis and go into septic shock, leaving her on the brink of death.
Thankfully, she narrowly made it through and has since been recovering at her home on the Gold Coast, and is now sharing her story to help raise awareness of the disease, as well as the importance of vaccination.
“We had been planning our trip to Japan for six months and were just so excited to be there,” Anna, who works in marketing, told news.com.au.
“It was an amazing trip, we had the best time. We went all over the country and ended it in Tokyo, which is where we were on our last night.
“I felt fine up until the final night. I went to bed feeling fine and excited for the next day, but woke up at 2am feeling unbelievably cold and aggressively shivering.”
The couple had gone to sleep at their hotel on February 4th, with their window open to let some fresh breeze in, and so Anna had assumed the temperature had plummeted during the night.
Trying to warm up, she popped on a jumper and wrapped herself in a blanket.
But still, she couldn’t stop shivering.
She decided to go for a hot shower, but still did not feel better, so decided to take some Panadol.
Although it helped a little with the shivering, her symptoms only got worse and she soon began throwing up. Weirdly, her vomit was black.
Not thinking much of it, she went back to bed and got a few more hours sleep. But after waking up later that morning, she went to the bathroom.
That is when everything suddenly got so much worse.
From bad to worse
“I actually ended up fainting on the toilet,” she recalled.
“My partner found me, and brought me back to bed. I started just vomiting and shivering again, and then my whole body started to ache, especially my neck.
“I managed to eat a small ball of rice and an electrolyte drink, but vomited it all up. I wanted to just get through the day and make it to my flight that night.
“I started feeling quite hot, and began sweating, so started taking some clothes off. But then Liam noticed a rash start forming on my body.
“He said it was like heaps of little mosquito bites that were starting to develop over my whole body.
“That is when he decided to call an ambulance.”
While this all started at 2am, by 1pm she was going in and out of consciousness, with Liam at the hotel’s reception desk desperately asking them to call an ambulance.
Upon arrival to Tokyo’s National Centre for Global Health and Medicine, her blood pressure was extremely low at 81 over 35 (anything under 90 over 60 is considered hypotension) and her temperature was just 35 C, indicating the start of hypothermia.
The doctors did a brain scan, which showed that it could be meningitis, but a lumbar puncture into her spine to test the fluid confirmed it.
Fight for survival
She was started on antibiotics right away to help fight the infection, while she also needed a blood transfusion due to her white blood cell count being extremely low.
“I don’t actually remember any of that, the last thing I remember was talking to my mum on the phone before the ambulance came,” she said.
“Apparently I was quite agitated, was not following instructions and just being difficult. I was talking but nothing was making sense.
“It was all extremely scary for my partner who had to see it all unfold before his eyes.”
In what was likely one of the most frightening phone calls of their lives, Anna’s parents Ghis and Adrian were told by doctors to get over to Japan right away and without hesitation, booked the next flight out.
Anna’s condition rapidly deteriorated and she had gone into septic shock, with all her vital organs slowly shutting down.
In a frightening twist, Anna’s lungs also began bleeding into her airways, so the young woman had to be intubated and put on an artificial respirator that breathed for her, while her brain continued swelling.
As they were about to board their plane to Tokyo, Anna’s parents received a call from the medical team who updated them on their daughter’s condition.
Asking whether their daughter was going to survive, they were met with just three chilling words.
“We don’t know.”
After a nerve-racking 9 hours in the air, the pair touched down in Tokyo and rushed to the hospital.
Thankfully, Anna was still alive.
She was in the ICU for five frightening days in a coma, completely sedated on strong medication.
Doctors were unsure whether she would wake up from this state, but thankfully, she regained consciousness two days after they stopped the drugs.
Anna was moved out of ICU but had to stay in hospital for another week to ensure she would be stable enough for air travel.
Thankfully, she took out Zoom travel insurance before embarking on her trip, which covered the majority of the costs that she would have otherwise been out of pocket for.
“I started doing physio in Japan and was finally able to walk again,” she recalled.
“They were happy that I could at least walk by myself onto the plane. The doctors told me I could only go back if I was laying down in business.
“Thankfully, my insurance booked my whole family in business on a Qantas flight on the way back, they were so helpful and really looked after us.”
Back home
After a horror final two weeks in Japan, Anna finally touched back down in Queensland, and was rushed straight to the Gold Coast University Hospital from Brisbane International airport.
Anna was in hospital for another six days after landing back in Australia, continuing wound care and physio to help in her recovery.
She was finally discharged and was able to go home on the 27th of February, an entire six weeks after the couple had first set off to Japan for their holiday.
“Finally being home was incredible but also overwhelming, it was the first time I was alone and could be with my thoughts,” she explained.
“It was so hard to believe what had just happened to me. It all hit me at once.
“Now, it has been two months since this all happened, and I am almost fully recovered, but still feeling quite fatigued.
“I am still looking after my wounds and go to the hospital outpatients clinic once a week for a check-up. I also lost about 7kg while in hospital, and most of this was muscle.
“So now I am trying to regain strength and feel like my old self.”
Anna’s partner of three years, Liam, was by her side for the entirely of her journey, and while it has been a frightening ordeal, it was undoubtedly bought them closer together.
“He was amazing. I literally tell him that he saved my life,” she said.
“Liam was the one who called the ambulance and looked after me.
“We have definitely become a lot closer because of it.
“It is crazy how life can change so quickly form one day to the next and you never truly know what is going to happen.
“We both have a new lease on life now and are just so thankful that I made it through.
“You truly never know when your last day on earth might be, so it’s so important to appreciate every moment.”
Am I at risk?
Like many young Australians, Anna was vaccinated against the ACWY strains of meningococcal, but not against the B strain, despite it being responsible for over 80 per cent of cases in Australia.
According to Bupa Clinical Director, Dr Tony MacDermott, the reason why the ACWY vaccination is routinely covered but not B is related to “cost-benefit calculations”.
The National Immunisation Program only covers the B-strain vaccination for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children aged under two years old and people with certain medical conditions.
However, many states have introduced programs to fill this gap with B-strain coverage, including Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory, while Tasmania is considering it.
The B strain is actually very rare in Japan, with diagnoses in the nation only in the single digits annually.
Anna said the chance of her contracting it in Japan were about 1 in 4 million, making her experience even more astonishing.
“Like many bacteria, meningococcus is an everyday part of our world, though most of us don’t know it,” Dr MacDermott told news.com.au.
“Roughly one in 10 people carry it harmlessly in their nose or throat. Like the flu, it is transmitted by aerosol drops generated by coughing or sneezing, or through direct intimate contact.
“IMD (bacterial meningococcal disease) is severe, with 15 -20 per cent of those affected dying, and another 20 per cent suffering permanent injury, even with appropriate treatment.
“One reason for such poor outcomes is its propensity to develop with alarming speed.
“Roughly half of people who die from meningococcal disease do so within 24 hours of symptom onset.”
The risk of this however is low, with only 100 to 150 cases per year in Australia recently.
He added that it was important for people to look out for the signs and symptoms.
“Anybody with symptoms of meningitis must be managed as a medical emergency no matter what the suspected cause may be,” he explained.
“In children and young adults, typical symptoms include sudden high fever, neck stiffness, severe headache, a purple skin rash, sensitivity to light, confusion or reduced consciousness, seizures, nausea and vomiting.
“In infants and young children, they include high fever, irritability, drowsiness or lethargy, vomiting, bulging of the fontanelle (the soft spot at the front of an infant’s skull), and blotchy or pale blue skin.”
For persons not covered, the cost of vaccination is significant, being around $150 per dose with 2 or 3 doses required.
jasmine.kazlauskas@news.com.au
AloJapan.com