A POLICE officer who contracted meningitis has spoken of his delight at being back on the beat and fighting fit.

It was a battle for doctors to save PC Danny McAuley’s life after he contracted the deadly meningococcal septicaemia in December 2008.

The 36-year-old spent three months in Darlington Memorial Hospital. His heart stopped three times and some of his internal organs failed.

As a result or the disease, most of his toes were partly or wholly amputated, his hearing was impaired and his fingers, while intact, lack some strength and flexibility.

But now the officer, from Bishop Auckland, is happy to be back on duty.

“You could say I was unlucky to get meningitis in the first place but, bearing in mind everyone thought I was going to die, I am certainly not complaining,” he said.

“On the night it happened, I genuinely thought I had gone down with the flu.

“But after I collapsed on the bathroom floor of my parents’ house, I was rushed to hospital and placed in a medicallyinduced coma for more than three weeks.”

He compared the experience to the BBC television show Life On Mars, where an officer in a coma believes he is back working in the Seventies.

“Even though I was unconscious and heavily drugged, my brain was still taking in certain things and I thought at several times I was living in an alternative reality, like Life on Mars,” he said.

“I also had some very weird hallucinations, including a spell where I believed I was undergoing a medical experiment involving wounded soldiers.”

He began restricted duties last summer in the offender management unit, but was operational in May, carrying out a number of desk-bound duties, such as allocating vehicles to drivers. Last month, he was cleared to resume full response duties.

“It would have been very easy to write me off after something that serious,” he said.

“But the support I have had from family, friends and colleagues has made getting back to work so much easier and I really do appreciate everything they have done for me.”

Mr McAuley and his family raised £15,000 for the hospital to help buy a second haemofiltration machine. The first helped save the officer’s life by cleaning and pumping his blood.

■ The Reverend Brenda Jones, of Woodhouse Close Church, has become Bishop Auckland police station’s first female chaplain. The former accountant hosts police and communities together meetings at the church, where she is priest-in-charge.

She said: “I hope to be on hand to listen when needed and support staff, so I can give them something in return for the support I receive.”