A Different Kind of Melbourne Welcome

G'Day mates!  How ya going?

Kind of a long story, so I'm going to try and condense it while still managing to include all the juicy and infectious details.  I will also be using the common Aussie jargon throughout this post, so try and keep up with me here. Haha. I arrived in Melbourne on February 12th after a cool 10 hour plane ride from Phuket.  Upon my arrival I was greeted by my complimentary transportation from the Uni where I met many other American exchange students, which was cool but I was eager to mingle with the locals.

Because I arrived early to Queens College, which was where I was to stay for Melbourne Welcome, I was pretty much the only person staying in the dorms which was pretty scary.  I spent that entire night alternating between having crazy nightmares and laying awake with intense fever, chill, and headache.  In the morning, I had finally hit a wall and spent a good hour hugging the toilet bowl.  At that point, I realized that it was time to give in and ask for a nurse.  Thank god the student staff knew exactly what to do!  I owe them my life!  They immediately put me in a taxi to take me to the ER.  I was just way, way too sick.


I spent a good couple freaking out in the ER when they started asking me about my recent history.  When I told them that I had been traveling through Asia, they immediately started to voice concerns regarding malaria, typhoid, and dinghy fever.  It wasn't long before I realized that I was not returning to the University anytime soon.  Although feverish, I faintly remember receiving concerned expressions from the doctors when I admitted to venturing to rural river farm areas of Cambodia and also swimming in a waterfall in the jungles of Chiang Mai.  Things really started to seem bad when all of the doctors (and even the student leader who took me there) began to wear full hospital gowns, gloves and masks!! So freaky!

After about 7 hours in the ER, an X-ray, multiple blood samples, and other bodily collections; I was wheeled up to my new, glamorous high-rise sweet which was nestled elegantly on in the happening infectious disease department of the awesome 9th floor.  The hospital food was excellently nutritious and surprisingly not to shabby either.  On the contrary, being shackled to an IV drip and locked away in quarantine certainly began to lose it's charm quickly.  I remember listening to my iPod over and over, thinking about what I was missing out on back at the Melbourne Welcome for exchange students.  I also remember when we finally decided to call my mom to inform her on what had happened.  Boy was that fun!  After convincing her that I was fine and well on my way to recovery, she still managed to get a Visa and begin hunting for the soonest flight over.   All of these things just increased my determination to get better!!

I will never forget the final moment when the doctors informed me that I could return back to campus to join back in on the Melbourne Welcome festivities.  All of the tests came back negative for malaria, typhoid and dinghy fever, and the doctors believed that it had been the outcome of food poisoning.  Although Thai hospitals are supposed to be amongst the best in the world, in retrospect, I was way relieved that my body had decided to get sick in English-speaking and westernized Australia.  My biggest joke of this experience was how I had gotten a better tour of the Melbourne hospital before I had really even seen the city. HARDY HAR HAR!  And when I returned to the Melbourne Welcome, all of my USC friends greeted me with the rumor that was spawned due to my mysterious disappearance.  Apparently the running rumor was that I had met some gorgeous Australian girl and run away with her to Sydney.  What a scream! haha

To finish off, I will reveal the mysterious disease that the results led to at my check-up on Wednesday.  It turns out that I had..... drumroll please... a dynamic duo of NON-TYPHOID SALMONELLA and CAMPYLOBACTER.  The doctor mentioned that he believed that it was caused by improperly cooked or infected chicken and also that it was completely out of my system.  I guess there is such a thing as too much Pad Thai in this case!! Haha

I promise I will put up a post on what I've been up to since this prodigiously catastrophic event soon!