Michael and Ashli: AuStRaLiA

Back in March my parents went on a 3 week vacation to Australia. About 2 weeks into the trip we got a call from my dad saying that my mom was really sick. She woke up one morning unable to speak or get up out of bed. She was mumbling and trying to get up but didn't have the strength. Anyway, my dad decided to call an ambulance and she rode 1.5 hours to the nearest hospital (they were out in the sticks).

To make a long story short they didn't know what it was at first. After an MRI they ruled out a stroke (which was good) but they still didn't know what it was. They thought it could be Viral or Bacterial Meningitis but had no idea which one. They decided to pump her full of anti-virals and anti-biodics and hope that within a few days she would come out of it. It was a pretty scary time for my family with my dad being all alone clear across the world, and all of their kids being far away across the world and not being able to do anything.

Since I was the only person to have a passport I was the lucky one that got to go over there and help. Since I was kind of scared of flying internationally all by myself, Michael decided to come with me! After several days of my mom being dazed and confused she finally slowly got her memory back. It was such a relief to see that she knew who I was and that everything was slowly coming back to normal. She had to stay in the hospital for about 6 or 7 days total so that she could get pumped full of the medicine so that they could make sure that whatever she had would be completely out of her system. She was officially diagnosed with Meningial Encephalitis by the Australian doctors. To this day we still don't know how she got it, they said it's just a virus that goes around. Someone else could have gotten the exact same virus, but in her body at that time it turned into Meningial Encephalitis.

We got there on a Monday and she was released from the hospital on a Thursday. Our flight back wasn't until Sunday so we had a few days after she was released to finish up the trip with some sight-seeing in Melbourne. Here are some pictures from our trip.

This is the airplane we rode on. I believe it is the biggest plane that they make. It is a double decker from the front to the back and has 10 seats across with 2 aisles.

This is the hospital that my mom stayed in. It was super old.

This was just a cool looking tree next to the hospital

My mom will probably kill me for posting this but good thing she doesn't read my blog :) This was her after 4 days in the hospital. I guess the medicine they were pumping her full of made everything taste like metal. For some reason this particular day the food didn't taste like metal so she devoured that hospital tomato soup. To this day she says it was the best tomato soup she's ever had and she craves it all the time! I am pretty sure it's just because that's the first time she had eaten real food in 4 days.

Another cool looking tree

Wild Kangaroos in someone's front lawn. I guess Kangaroos are kind of a nuisance there. They eat the grass down to the root and it kills it. They are pretty much EVERYWHERE! It was so cool.