November 9, 2009
Spring Break: New Zealand
October 12, 2009
Where do they come up with things here?
How I Got To Experience Australian Health Care
My birthday week was going great – I got to celebrate Monday and Tuesday night with all of my friends and was gearing up for my birthday dinner and “Jackie the Pub Crawl” on Thursday. That’s when it struck. Wednesday morning I woke up with a headache but I figured it was just because I was tired and had been out late. However, throughout the day it started getting worse and worse to the point that it was almost unbearable. After dinner, I took what I thought would be a short nap and woke up 3 hours later. I was feeling better so at midnight, my friends and I went to the local pub to celebrate the beginning of my real birthday. After 20 minutes, I started feeling terrible again and couldn’t even enjoy myself. An hour after getting there, we left and went to get Ayden’s (best late night Turkish food EVER… BK is no match for a late night kebab). I felt so sick I couldn’t even eat (that’s when you know I’m sick). So I tried sleeping but around 4am I woke up shaking, with the worst headache I have ever had, and feeling nauseous. I called my mom to see what I should do and she told me to go to the hospital.
When I got to the ER, they gave me some painkillers and told me to wait. Because I had gone out, they figured it was probably just a hangover. So I sat in the waiting room, curled up in a ball for a few hours. Around me was an interesting group of people – a girl with an IV who kept apologizing for last night (I assume she was too drunk), a man with a hand smashed in by a door, and an old man that wasn’t wearing a shirt and had cuts all over his face. After a couple of hours of waiting, I finally got to see the doctor. They decided to do blood tests and an intern came to poke a needle into my veins. I guess she hadn’t had much experience because it took four pokes in different parts of my arms to get it right. One of the times, she even started wiggling the needle in my arm; I could feel it pushing into my muscle. Eventually, she got it right. I was given an IV and a bed to rest in.
A few hours later, the doctor came back and said that, as a precaution, they were going to do a spinal tap. They didn’t expect to find anything but just wanted to make sure. I got changed into a hospital gown, they gave me morphine (that was funny) and some anesthetics, and before I knew it, I was out. I woke up an hour or two later to find my friends and Kat from Arcadia standing by my bedside. A doctor came over and I was informed that they found meningitis in my spinal fluid. Awesome. Meningitis on my birthday. This would happen to me.
I had to spend the night in the hospital, which is probably one of the worst ways to spend a birthday, but my friends were great. They brought the celebration to me by bringing me Japanese food, a cake, and the birthday packages I had received. After they had to leave because visiting hours were over, I tried sleeping but the one of the other patients in the room kept screaming on the phone about how the doctors weren’t listening to her. Apparently, there was some conspiracy against her…. The other two patients were much quieter: one was about to have a major surgery the next day and the other was a very old lady who seemed to be on her deathbed. I finally fell asleep but every hour or so the nurses woke me up to change my IV and take some more blood. When I woke up in the morning, I was feeling better and was able to go back to my apartment! I had to stay in bed for the next week and a half and take painkillers every few hours, but it was nice resting in my own bed and watching lots of movies. The meningitis affected my walking so I wasn’t able to walk or move too much for the next week. My version of walking was more a slow painful shuffle. Leaving the hospital, we flagged a taxi and asked to go to the village, which is only about 2 blocks away. Seeing where we were heading, the taxi driver started laughing and made fun of us for being lazy. You can bet he stopped laughing after I told him I was in the hospital and was unable to walk.
So I left my teenage years as a sickly hospital patient with a yet a longer medical history. But at least it makes a good story. I think the best part of being in the hospital on my birthday was when they doctors would ask when my birthday was to check the charts and medicine. The conversation went a little like this:
Doctor: Just to clarify, when is your birthday?
Me: Today.
Doctor: No, when’s your BIRTHDAY?
Me: TODAY.
Doctor: Ohhhh. Wow. I’m sorry. Well… happy birthday?
October 11, 2009
Pronunciation "mel bIN"
Sorry for the lack of updates! It’s been a busy month. Here’s what I’ve been up to:
For the first weekend in September, my friends and I went on a trip to Melbourne. We got there late Thursday night and were leaving EARLY Monday morning. We booked a room at a budget hotel in the city centre, but upon arrival, the manager informed us that we could only sleep 3 people in the room, and we had 4 people. We didn’t care about being cramped so we even tried sneaking the fourth person in, but alas there were no secret passageways. So we had to scramble all around the city trying to find another room. We found a hostel down the street so Kayla and Erin stayed there and Kate and I slept in the hotel room.
The next day, we took a free City Circle tram around the city centre to get a feel for Melbourne and see some of the sights. It was a really cute old tram and we enjoyed getting our bearings in a new city. Melbourne is a lot smaller than Sydney and is on a grid system, not Sydney’s messy, rugged, harbour system. After riding around on the tram for an hour, we got off and went shopping in Melbourne’s “funky” district. There were a lot of great little shops. I saw so much I wanted to buy I had to contain myself (something that took me a while to learn haha). A lot of the shops and cafes were in narrow alleyways, and it kind of looked like Diagon Alley. I found one alleyway that didn’t have any shops but was covered in graffiti art and hightops hanging from wires. I like a lot of street art but this was definitely one of the neatest things I’ve seen.
After shopping, we went to the observation deck on top of the Rialto Tower, where we saw all of the city and suburbs from way up high. It was beautiful and interesting to see the city from a different angle. It was also fun using the binoculars to creepily people-watch from the sky. You can see some serious close-ups of people on the street.
That night we tried our hand at the Crown Casino, which reminded me a lot of the Atlantis in the Bahamas. It’s a huge complex with a hotel, restaurants, food court, shops, cinema, and of course a massive casino. We went to dinner at one of the restaurants there and then made our way to the 1cent slots. I was pretty successful there (winning a whole dollar!) so I decided to move on to the big(ger) leagues: 2 cent machines. And there I won another 7 dollars! I WAS Lady Luck. Nothing could stop me. Getting bored of winning 40 cents here and there… I tried my hand at the $2 machines. And that is where my greed got the best of me. I lost it all… well, all $20 I had decided to gamble with. But at least it was a fun experience right? (At least that’s what my Grandma would say… I must have more of her in me than I thought.)
In the morning, we went to brunch in Federation Square. While eating, we kept seeing people in AFL (Australian Football League – a form of rugby) shirts and uniforms. When we asked someone, we found out there was a semifinal game that day between the Cats and the Bulldogs. We ran (well told a cabbie to speed) to the stadium and managed to score tickets! It had been a goal of ours to go to a sports game and luckily we managed to stumble across a big game. It was at the famous Melbourne Cricket Grounds, which holds 100,000 people! Insane. The game was really fun. AFL is such a ridiculous sport. There are so many people on the field and it literally looks like complete chaos. Medics and waterboys would run onto the field to talk to players DURING play. And when a team scored, giant (and I mean massive!) pom poms were swung over the wall by the endzone. We went into the game without any loyalties, but decided to cheer for the Cats (especially after they started winning) and they ended up being the victors! It was very exciting. We worked up an appetite with all our cheering, so we headed to the waterfront. It was beautiful there, with the city of Melbourne lit up behind it and really interesting statutes and fountains lining the boardwalk. Unfortunately, the restaurants were too expensive there so we went back to the city centre where we picked up some handrolls (sushi but in the shape of a wrap). Best handroll ever = sweet chili tuna with avocado.
Sunday we had booked a tour of the Great Ocean Road, one of the most beautiful coasts in the world. It was a whole day tour, starting in Melbourne and stopping at a bunch of coastal towns and Kodak moments. At one stop we got to see wild koalas and bright, colorful birds. I wanted to feed the birds (it was allowed, I promise!) so I took some bread from my Subway sandwich and held the crumbs out in my hand. Two birds landed on my arm, smelled the food, and then flew away. I guess they aren’t fans of Southwest Chipotle. Determined to feed these birds, I picked up some real bird food that other people had dropped on the ground and after chasing the birds around, holding my hand out, they finally ate out of my hand! That’s right, I had big, scary birds with claws on my hands and arms, eating out of my palm.
The best part of the day was seeing the Twelve Apostles. They are these incredible rock formations that are scattered in the ocean randomly. They are majestic and it’s baffling how they were formed. Unfortunately, there aren’t twelve of them anymore. A couple of them have crumbled into the ocean and are lost forever. Another beautiful stop was at the London Bridge, which is this really interesting formation that used to be a rock bridge until it crumbled. Although you can’t cross over to the formation, it still is really amazing. It was a long day but definitely one of the better ones in Australia. We saw a lot of natural beauty and on the drive home, a kangaroo and its baby hopped across the street right in front of our bus!
When we got back to Melbourne, we went to dinner at the food court in the Crown Complex. Our flight wasn’t until the next morning at 6a.m. so we decided to see Inglorious Basterds at the cinema in the complex before heading to the airport. The movie was great and afterwards we took a cab to the airport where we slept on the floor for a few hours until it was time to board the plane. That was an interesting experience. There were some others sleeping in the corners of the airport, and one old man who was wandering around, looking for beer, and videotaping everything. Strange.
The trip was awesome – I’m so glad we were able to get to Melbourne for the weekend. I liked Melbourne, but I like Sydney more so I was happy to get back and start celebrating my birthday week!